


So Cometh the Ragnarok

by AndroidPalindrome



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Both are actually relatively good with feelings, Demisexual Gabriel Reyes, Do not fuck with Gabriel Reyes, Domestic Bliss, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison/Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Flashbacks, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gabriel is willing to sacrifice too much for others, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, It's not easy being a double agent gais, Jack is a good and loving husband in spite of everything, Let Gabriel Reyes feel and have emotions and be emotional, Let Jack Morrison take care of Gabriel Reyes, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Old Married Couple, Past Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Past Sexual Assault, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rescue, Talon learned that the hard way, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, headcanon heavy, implied/referenced eating disorder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2018-10-18 03:43:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10608597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndroidPalindrome/pseuds/AndroidPalindrome
Summary: It starts like this:Jack has always known that the pressures of being 'Reaper' would eventually cause Gabriel to break. When a phone call comes in the middle of the night, he correctly suspects that his husband's reached his breaking point, but he doesn't expect why. He could never have foreseen an act that would shake up the foundations of the very war they're fighting.All he can do is be there for Gabriel. All he can do is love him.(Please heed the tags and the warnings inside.)(Chapter four added on 06/22/17.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally a one-shot that morphed into a 40+ page monstrosity inspired by many things Reaper76 fandom related. I'm willing to share my reasons with anyone that's interested.
> 
> The Big Bad Things implied by the tags and summary won't come in until chapter three, and when we eventually get to that point, I'll give the appropriate trigger warnings in the author's notes at the beginning of said chapter. While this fic does imply and talk about Bad Shit Happening, it's described as little as possible, and focuses heavily on the emotions and feelings of the victim instead of the acts themselves. All chapters will have section-specific trigger warnings at the very beginning.
> 
> There are no trigger warnings for the first chapter.
> 
> Well, with that, all I have left to say is that I hope you enjoy!

It was three in the morning when the call came in, rousing Jack from anxious dreams and sending him scrambling to find the phone next to his pillow, because that ringtone meant the same thing as it had for the past thirty-some years.

“ Hnnn…hello?” Even in Jack’s half-awake state, he was conscious enough to not address Gabriel by name from the start; the other man always had a nasty habit of losing his cell phone during missions.

The seconds ticked by as Jack waited for a response, and he had started to wonder if Gabriel had somehow pocket-dialed him when there was a deep breath on the other line, shuddering and strained.

“ Hey, babe.”

The sound of Gabriel’s voice slammed Jack back into full consciousness, and the former commander almost fell off the bed in his haste to sit up, because Gabriel’s voice was shaking. Gabriel’s voice was wavering. Gabriel sounded like he was about to cry. “ Gabo? Is that you?”

“ Yeah. I’m sorry…I woke you up, didn’t I?”

“ Don’t worry about it.” Jack snatched his visor off the bedside table and shoved it over his eyes hard enough to bruise the bridge of his nose. “ What’s going on? Talk to me.”

“ Calm down, Jackie; you’ll get an asthma attack if you get all worked up.” Leave it to Gabriel Motherfucking Reyes to try and comfort  _ him  _ when he himself seemed seconds away from a breakdown. “ I just… _ fuck… _ ”

“ Gabo?” Jack’s hand groped for the light switch.

“...I just wanted to hear your voice, is all.”

Jack nearly knocked the lamp off the bedside table in his haste to turn on the _fucking_ _light_ , and in less than a second he was on his feet, the phone switched to speakerphone and thrown on the bed so he could get dressed.

“ Where are you, Gabriel?”

“ Jackie…”

“ Don’t you ‘Jackie’ me!” Jack’s gravelly, sleep-scratched voice echoed through the empty barracks, and as he pulled his pants on (almost ripping them in his haste), he could hear the waves of the Gibraltar Strait crashing against the rock wall of the hollowed-out structure. “ You’re a shit liar when it comes to me, Gabo, and an even worse one when you’re like this.”

“ Like what?”

“ You know exactly what I mean, Gabriel!”

“ I’m not…!” Gabriel’s voice faltered and broke, and Jack’s heart lurched violently in his chest, the younger man wanting nothing more than to reach through the phone and hold his husband tight. “ Just…just fucking stop, Jack. Why do you have to…Christ…”

“ It’s gonna be okay, Gabriel.” Jack knelt at the foot of the bed, threw open his trunk, and began to fling random articles of clothing across the room. Surely his outfit was somewhere in that mess. “ Just stay on the line with me, okay? Don’t you  _ dare _ hang up on me.”

“ Okay…” Gabriel sounded far too eager to comply with his request, and Jack was stupidly relieved when he found his Soldier: 76 uniform at the bottom of his trunk, grabbing the organized pile and throwing it unceremoniously on the bed. “ Where are you, sunbeam?”

“ Gibraltar.” Jack threw on his black undershirt and began to strap his flex armor on his chest and legs. “ Rest of the team’s on a mission in Siberia—won’t be back for a week. Left me to hold down the fort…well, what’s left of it.”

Gabriel’s chuckle was wet but genuine. “ Oh come on, Jackie, don’t tell me you asked to stay behind in the freaking Watchpoint for some alone time.”

“  _ No! _ Well, I mean…yeah.” Jack floundered and fumbled with the laces of his combat boots. “ Hana’s on tour with Lucio, and it’s just… _ louder  _ without them, believe it or not. Get tired of the others looking at me like I’m still their Strike Commander. Prefer being the ‘team dad’, honestly.”

“ It suits you.” Gabriel’s voice was wistful and even wetter. “ It really does.”

More silence. Jack tried to squelch down the panic pooling in his gut and focused on fastening his gloves.

“ What happened, Gabriel?”

Gabriel’s breath caught audibly in his throat.

“ Gabo, please…talk to me…”

“ I killed them, Jack.”

Jack’s hand froze centimeters from his respirator. “ Killed who, Gabriel?” His gaze locked on the phone.

“ The base. The whole base.” The robotic monotone of Gabriel’s voice did far more to spook Jack than the confession of mass killing.

“ A Talon base?”

Jack swore he could hear Gabriel nodding. “ Not all of them…I know some ran when they heard the alarms and saw me on the security feed. Word’ll get back to the higher-ups in Talon…probably already is. I can’t be Reaper anymore, Jack…I can’t go back.”

_ Jesus, Mary, and Joseph _ , Jack felt like a supremely shitty human being at that moment, because a small part of him had started internally jumping for joy at Gabriel finally, finally,  _ finally  _ giving up the Reaper persona for good. If said man hadn’t sounded like he was teetering on a thin line between hysteria and dissociation, Jack would have been tempted to smile from relief. Selfish, selfish,  _ selfish. _

“ How bad did you mess them up?”

“ Killed all the commanders. Stole all the data I could get my hands on. Set explosives and blew the place sky high.”

“  _ Jesus,  _ Gabo!” Jack clicked the respirator into place and shook his head. “ What the hell brought all  _ this  _ on?”

There was no answer from the other end of the line, and it took a few seconds for the realization to kick Jack in the gut, sending ice water flooding through his veins and making him dizzy from fear.

“ Oh my God, Gabriel…” Jack shakily gripped at the nearest wall as he was sent reeling. Gabriel Reyes was the definition of ‘professional’—cool, levelheaded, logical, and unflappable in the most heated situations. His sangfroid battle face was one of the numerous reasons he was chosen to lead Overwatch during the First Omnic Crisis. For his husband to be pushed to the edge like this…

“ What did they  _ do _ to you? What  _ happened _ ?”

Jack could tell Gabriel was trying to respond, but the only sounds that came through the phone were aborted starts and painful chokes, and Jack gave him a moment to collect his thoughts as he strapped his ammo belt around his waist and took mental note of all the planes left in the hanger. Which one was the fastest while still maintaining stealth?

“ Gabo, please, stay with me. Keep talking.”

“  _ Nothing! _ They did  _ nothing _ to me!” A snarl, then, softer, “ I wouldn’t let them, Jack. I just…I couldn’t do it…”

“ Gabriel…”

“ I  _ tried _ , Jack! I…!” Gabriel was slipping into hysterics, and Jack made a decision there and then to  _ fuck undetectable _ , grabbing his jacket, his pack, and the phone before literally sprinting out the door. “ I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it. I panicked, I blew it, we’ll never get Amélie back now, we’ll never get to the bottom of Zurich, we’ll never avenge all our friends, and it’s all my fucking—!”

“  _ Gabriel! _ ”

The snapped order stopped Gabriel in his tracks.

“ Gabo, listen to me; just forget about Amélie and Overwatch for now, okay?” The soldier and friend in Jack almost couldn’t believe he said those words, but the partner of thirty-some odd years in him said  _ fuck that noise, Gabriel’s in trouble!  _ The love in him always won out in the end. “ Are you somewhere safe?”

A shuddering breath. “ Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

“ Good. Now tell me where you are before I violate international law and have Athena track the signal.”

Jack new Gabriel well enough to sense that he was opening his mouth to argue, was about to say  _ ‘I’m not a damsel in distress, Jackie’ _ , but was mercifully too tired to even attempt protesting. “ You remember that motel we stayed at during that op in Toledo? The one where we took down at human and omnic trafficking ring?”

“ How could I forget? I was one of the last missions we were on together before everything fell apart.” The cool, misty air of Gibraltar’s night smacked Jack in the face as he emerged from the barracks, and he could now hear the foghorns of the nearby shipping freighters over the roaring of the waves; the strait’s waters had been violent as of late.  _ Really _ , Jack thought,  _ Tracer’s plane could get me to America undetected and in a few hours. She won’t even know I borrowed it. _ “ Is that where you are, or are you just reminiscing?”

“ Yeah…I’m here. Same room, too.”

Jack knew Gabriel was being more than sentimental; if anyone was tapping the phone line, they wouldn’t know what motel they were talking about or what room number. Only Jack would be able to find him. Good thing he too was sentimental, which—combined with his uncanny photographic memory—meant that he knew exactly where Gabriel was talking about, including what the room looked like all those years ago.

“ Okay, gotcha.” The hangar door creaked in protest as it slid open, the lights flickering on automatically; Winston really needed to get one of the ‘kids’ to help with maintenance. “ It’s not near that base, is it?”

“ No. It’s…” Gabriel trailed off and grunted in frustration. “It’s several states away. I think.”

“ You don’t know?”

“ I…I don’t remember.” Jack had only ever heard Gabriel sound that dazed a handful of (awful) times in his life. “ I stole a long-range transport truck from the base. Its gas tank was full. Drove it until it ran out. Got here. Somehow.”

_ Christ, he dissociated all the way to Toledo.  _ Jack didn’t even bother trying to find the spare keycard for Tracer’s plane in the coordination office; he made a beeline for the nearest terminal, logged into Athena, and typed in his old master password (the one he swore to Winston he’d never use outside of emergencies) to boot up the plane and open the cockpit. He’d explain himself later.

“ Don’t worry about it, Gabo; it doesn’t matter how you got there. Just…just don’t leave, okay?” Jack unceremoniously flung his pulse rifle in the navigator’s seat of the plane before climbing in himself. He honestly didn’t care much for flying in general (given his low-key fear of heights), but their training in the SEP and Overwatch required basic proficiency in piloting, and he hadn’t truly been grateful to have that skill until that very moment. “ I’ll be there in five hours. Don’t move if you can help it.”

“ In five hours…? Jackie, I swear to  _ God _ …!” Jack was sickeningly glad to hear that Gabriel had enough pep left in him to scold him like old times. “ Don’t tell me you’re going to steal a plane from Gibraltar to get here!”

Jack set the phone on the front console, strapped himself into the pilot’s seat, and yanked the cockpit canopy closed. “ It’s not stealing if Winston technically stole it first. You can’t steal something from a thief.”

“ Jackie…!”

“ Gabriel.” Jack put the plane’s engines into warm-up mode and took off his respirator. “ I am already in the plane. Don’t even try me.”

Jack fully expected Gabriel to snit back, like he had a thousand times before in similar arguments, but instead he heard something that sounded suspiciously like a muffled sob. “ Gabriel?”

“ I’m…I’m fine.” He wasn’t, he clearly wasn’t, but Jack knew it was more than second nature to Gabriel to hold others up instead of himself. “ Just… _ fuck _ , Jack, are you really coming? Flying halfway around the world just to pick up my sorry ass?”

“ You’d do it for me.” Jack grabbed the pilot’s oxygen mask and turned it over in his hands. “ Just like I’m doing it for you. I have your back and you have mine, just like it’s always been, like it always  _ will  _ be.”

The sob was clearly audible this time. “ I ruined your life.”

“ And I ruined yours, yet you’re still with me, aren’t you?” Jack reached out and longingly traced the edges of the phone’s screen. “ I’d rather have you ruin my life forever than be with anyone else. Somehow, inexplicably, I guess you feel the same.”

“ Of course I do, you fucking moron.” God, even when he was clearly miserable, Gabriel still had the most endearing grumpy huffing he’d ever heard. “ I just…okay. Yeah. A few hours, right?”

“ Yep.” Jack’s fingers danced across the touch-screen of the console as he input Toledo’s regional airport into the autopilot. “ I’ve gotta hang up so I can fly…promise me you’ll stay there, Gabo. Promise.”

“ I don’t have anywhere else to go, Jackie.” Gabriel’s voice was trembling with the effort of pretending he wasn’t crying, and  _ fuck,  _ why hadn’t anyone invented a phone that would let you reach across the screen and touch the person on the other side? “ Just you. You’re the only home I’ve ever had.”

“ Gabriel.” Jack’s own words lodged in his throat. “ The same. It’s always been the same for me. I’ll be there within five hours. I love you.”

“ Love you too, sunbeam.” The older man’s voice began to numb again. “ And…sorry. I’m sorry…I’m sorry…”

Before Jack could respond, the call was cut from the other side, and the former Strike Commander barely kept himself from screaming and slamming his phone into splinters against the cockpit wall.

* * *

 

_ It starts like this: _

_ Soldier: 76 and Reaper arehuddled on the bedroom floor of a safe-house in Dorado, blood dripping from a knee-to-thigh splitting gash on the vigilante’s right leg and numerous tendrils of black smoke wafting fretfully from the mercenary’s patchwork body. They are covered with the blood and grime of a recent firefight but neither of them could care less. They are gloveless, maskless, and breathless; Jack is nestled into Gabriel’s lap, head tucked under his chin and arms wrapped around his waist, and Gabriel has wrapped his own arms and legs around Jack in a way that suggests a protective cage. They’re pressed so closely together that it would be hard, in the dark of the night, to tell where one man ended and the other began. Despite the tears cutting smooth trails through the blood and grime caked on their faces, they were smiling for the first time in six years, eyes closed serenely and hands clenching tightly. They wished—as they always had—that they could melt together. _

_ “ You feel pretty solid for a dead man.” Jack mutters, voice as wet as his cheeks. _

_ “  And you feel pretty warm for a corpse.” The scratchiness of Gabriel’s words betrays the tightness of his throat. “ Don’t think I wanna wake up for awhile.” _

_ “ Funny—I don’t think I wanna wake up  _ **_ever_ ** _.” Jack nuzzles into the curve of Gabriel’s neck. “ You look good with longer hair. You always have.” _

_ “ It needs a trim; fucking curls get in my eyes whenever I get sweaty. You’d think death would’ve taken care of sweating.” Gabriel kisses the top of Jack’s head and moves just enough to grab the other man’s right hand in his own. _

_ “ You still have the ring.” The corners of Gabriel’s smile are weighed down with regret as his thumb ghosts over the battered, blue-tinted platinum band encircling Jack’s ring finger.  “ Lost mine in the explosion, I guess; when I woke up it was gone. Was too overwhelmed with everything to think about asking Angela.” _

_ Jack’s answer is to let go of Gabriel’s hand, reach inside his flex armor collar, and pull out a thin silver chain. There’s a flash of metallic red and Gabriel’s breath catches in his throat. “ Is that…?” _

_ “ Angie gave it to me after I woke up. She asked me if I wanted to see your body, and I’d…I’d already seen it. I couldn’t stand seeing it again.” Jack chokes before ripping the chain off his neck and placing the whole thing in Gabriel’s palm. “ So she gave me this. It was all I had left of you.” _

_ “ Oh, sunbeam…” Gabriel briefly ignores the ring in favor of burying his face in Jack’s white hair, his shoulders trembling with the effort of keeping himself together. After a minute or so, he releases Jack to hold up the makeshift necklace, noting the way the red-tinted platinum was shining in the dim light despite being scratched and battered. He grins like it’s Christmas as he slips the ring off the chain, grabs Jack’s hand, and places it square in the palm. “ Wanna see if it still fits?” _

_ “ I’m sure it will…you haven’t changed  _ **_that_ ** _ much.” Jack’s grumble is betrayed by the giddy grin on his face, and he sniffles once before grabbing Gabriel’s right hand and shakily slipping the ring on his finger, just as he had nearly thirty-two years ago. It would be their anniversary in five months. “ It’s a little looser, actually…you been eating enough?” _

_ “ Of course I have; I’m not  _ **_you,_ ** _ Jackie.” His left hand pats Jack’s bony side worriedly while he lifts up and stares at his right hand. It felt like a puzzle piece clicking back into place for the both of them. “ The nanomachines are what benefit from it now. I’ll have to remake my finger with a little more mass next time I wraith.” _

_ “ Do you think you can take anyone with you when you teleport?” Jack twines his hand with Gabriel’s. Their red and blue bands clink together like a promise. “ It would be handy if we could zip around together like that.” _

_ “ Unless you can turn into what amounts to an angry cloud of bees yourself, then no, you probably can’t.” Gabriel can’t stand not holding Jack any longer, and he reluctantly untangles his hand from Jack’s to wrap the younger man back in his arms, the both of them sighing as if weights were lifted off their shoulders. “ ‘sides, don’t wanna risk us becoming some sort of ugly-ass megacloud in the process.” _

_ Jack shrugs. “ I dunno. Might be nice.” _

_ “ It might be, ” Gabriel concedes, “but I don’t want to risk losing you. Not now. Not after everything.” _

_ Jack shudders and presses closer. “ Me neither. God, me neither. What do you wanna do for our anniversary?” _

_ “ You’re already thinking about this? Really?” Gabriel teasingly rubs his nose against Jack’s. “ Don’t matter to me. As long as I’m with you, baby, anything’ll be fine.” _

* * *

 

Toledo was just as much of a shithole as it had been eight years prior: flat concrete, dilapidated industrial warehouses, and gray, damp sadness—a city that had been chugging by on fumes since the late 1900s. The small, regional airport had been abandoned for several years, but its runways were still in decent condition, and it was an easy enough landing to make in the wet darkness. It was similarly easy enough to hotwire a maintenance truck left at the hangar, and Jack was on his way to the city within ten minutes of touching down, his visor enabling him to see clearly in the darkness despite the truck’s lights being off. The last thing he wanted was to be seen.

The thought of calling Gabriel back was tempting, but Jack never liked distractions when driving, so his cell phone remained tucked in his pocket.  _ It’s a fifteen-minute drive,  _ he told himself over and over,  _ only fifteen minutes. Only fifteen minutes. _

While he was normally one of those drivers that drove at exactly the speed limit (much to Hana and Lena’s eternal dismay), the responsible part of Jack’s brain tended to shut off whenever Gabriel was in danger, and he found himself pulling into the dimly-lit parking lot of the seedy motel within seven minutes instead of fifteen. For the sake of anonymity, Jack left his mask, respirator, jacket, and pulse rifle in the truck, and he stepped into the north Ohio drizzle with nothing but a pulse pistol holstered on one hip, a combat knife strapped to the other, and an uneasy eagerness sloshing in his stomach.

The light of the main office was on, but there was no sign of movement when he got out of the truck, meaning that whoever was in there either didn’t see him or didn’t care. Outside of the front office, the rest of the motel was dark, and Jack would’ve thought it abandoned if he hadn’t known better.  Gabriel was there, though, and memory guided his footsteps to the rightmost room of the complex. It was in that room where he and Gabriel had stayed eight years ago, huddled together and trying to banish the images of battered omnics and broken children out of their minds, and it was in that room where Gabriel was now huddled alone. Such a thing was more than unacceptable.

The room’s curtains were drawn and the door was unlocked, which hopefully meant that Gabriel wanted him to come right in, not that the normally-vigilant man was too out of it to remember something as simple as locking a door. One hand drifted to his sidearm while the other gripped the doorknob, and Jack forced a rattling breath down his throat before opening the door as quietly as possible, praying to every god he believed and didn’t believe in that Gabriel was there.

The room was dark, cold, and quiet when he entered, and Jack kept the door cracked open as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light. Once he could see reasonably well, he closed the door behind him, and there was a faint rustling noise from the area of the bed.

“ Jackie…?” Gabriel’s voice was thin and bleary and sent Jack’s stomach plummeting to his feet.

“ Gabo.” Jack dodged around the outlines of a dresser and lamp, circled around the bed, and fell to his knees next to the large lump huddled under the bedcovers. “ Gabriel, it’s me. Sorry it took so long.” He reached out, tugged the blankets down just enough to expose his husband’s head, and ran his hand along an unshaved jawline.

“ You actually came…” Gabriel’s cracking voice was full of awe. Jack continued to stroke his cheek, biting his lip at the feel of sticky wetness on his skin, and the similarly-broad hand that reached up to encircle his own was trembling. “ You reckless idiot. What would I do without you?”

“ I dunno. Be alone in a hotel room in Toledo, I guess.” Jack’s attempt at a joke fell flat and heavy on his tongue, and before he knew it, he was lifting up the covers and crawling in next to Gabriel. They were wrapped around each other within seconds, and Jack could feel that the other man had ‘shed’ his coat and flex armor, leaving only the dark shirt and pants he wore under his Reaper costume. His bare feet tangled with Jack’s steel-toed boots. “ Are you hurt, Gabo?”

“ No.” The unspoken  _ not physically  _ echoed between them. “ Hungry, I guess, even though I reaped a lot from the base. I’ve just been kinda…laying here. Waiting for you. Not even sleeping, really. Just. Wondering what I would’ve done if you hadn’t come.”

“ What would you’ve done?”

His question was met with silence, and Jack’s throat constricted painfully around another scream, knowing what the answer was and wishing he didn’t.  _ The same thing you would’ve done in this situation. _

“ Gabriel.” Jack was having a hard time breathing in Gabriel’s desperate grip, but  _ fuck oxygen,  _ seriously. “ Gabriel, what happened at that Talon base?”

His husband shook his head violently and buried his face in Jack’s chest.

“ Gabo…”

“ Jackie…Jackie,  _ please.  _ Please…”

Jack kissed the top of his head and nuzzled into the dark curls.

“ Shhhhhhhhh…okay. It’s okay. When you’re ready.” Jack knew better than anyone that Gabriel was the type of person that needed time to process and organize his thoughts before revealing them to others. If the event had been as traumatizing as Jack suspected, it would be awhile before the other man could even  _ consider _ talking about it, and he was one of the few people on Earth that refused to wrench words from Gabriel’s mouth.

Gabriel nodded and mouthed ‘thank you’ against his throat. Jack didn’t need to see his face to know that he was severely overwhelmed and hanging by a thread, clinging to Jack like he’d crumble if he let go, and maybe he would. Maybe they both would. Maybe they’d both been hanging by a thread for seven years and had been waiting for the chance to fall into each other’s arms.

Enough was finally enough.

“ Come home with me, Gabriel.”

It was a request he’d made a thousand times before, and each time Gabriel had responded with  _ not yet,  _ and  _ I’m not ready,  _ and  _ it’s not time,  _ and  _ soon, sunbeam, soon.  _ This time, Gabriel dug his fingers into the back of Jack’s armor, nodding frantically and weeping in relief, and it shouldn’t have been possible for a shitty Toledo motel room to feel so much like freedom.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: the vaguest mentions of an eating disorder (like, the vaguest), Gabriel suffering from a still-vague-but-becoming-clearer trauma, described non-sexual and sexual intimacy (they make out, but that's about it).
> 
> This chapter's basically just fluff, plot, and flashbacks. Enjoy!

_ It starts like this: _

_ Jack and Gabriel spend the first two months after their reunion wrapped up in each other. Jack puts his quest against LumériCo and Los Muertos on hold, and Gabriel lets his main employers know that he’s taking a brief leave of absence, though he lets Talon know how to contact him if they desperately need a job done; his alliance with Talon is too fragile and vital to risk compromising it on a vacation. Fortunately, the terrorist organization is in a merciful mood, or perhaps is briefly content to pull from the scant pool of mercenaries still alive and willing to work for them. The two are left alone for the next two months, and they make the most of every second, dipping into the shared savings they’d left untouched since Zurich and renting a small house on the outskirts of Dorado. _

_ In the mornings Jack reluctantly pulls himself away from Gabriel and goes down to the empty beach, where he’s content to sit and watch the waves and the sunrise in solitude until Gabriel joins him several hours later, pressing a kiss to his temple and a fresh cup of coffee into his hands. Gabriel effortlessly falls back into the habit of cooking most of their meals, and the sight of his undead husband clad in a colorful apron and humming over the stovetop does more to spurn Jack to eat than simple hunger ever could; they’re both pleased to discover that they can no longer see Jack’s ribs once the two months are up. Gabriel spends most of his afternoons as he did in ‘life’—sewing and knitting—and Jack does his damndest to compile their two massive, disorganized information pools on Talon and Overwatch into one manageable file, trying to let the clicking of the holo-keyboard distract him from Gabriel’s cheery whistling and how he wants nothing more than to toss the holo-computer away and wedge up against his side. He always gives up a few hours in and settles next to Gabriel with a book, trying to get through all the reading he missed during six years of vigilantism, and reading aloud to Gabriel is pleasurable in ways it had never been before The Fall. Jack’s voice, Gabriel always half-teases, is still the loveliest music he’s ever heard, and hurry up and read faster, damnit, because he wants to know if Gracile really killed her sister-in-law or is just being framed by her scorned ex-girlfriend. _

_ Several times a week, while Gabriel’s cooking dinner, Jack likes to go out for a few hours, hiking up the small hill to the town square full of lights, color, and confetti. He knows Gabriel would be more than willing to put dinner off for a few hours to go with him, but he likes to go alone, if only so he can always return with both groceries and a little something for Gabriel. Sometimes it’s a smaller gift—a set of thimbles, a new pair of half-moon glasses to replace the ones the UN repossessed from their quarters after their ‘deaths’, a box of his favorite pastries for dessert, a ball of yarn that’s the same shade of crimson as his eyes—and sometimes it’s a larger find—a bolt of fabric in Gabriel’s favorite shades of yellow and orange, a silver medallion of La Lechuza, a pair of small silver hoop earrings, an intricately carved and engraved wooden box to replace the battered one currently housing his sewing kit. Gabriel always rolls his eyes and mutters in Spanish whenever Jack shows him what he buys, but the corresponding brilliant grin betrays his gratitude, and the way he tenderly holds Jack and kisses his receding hairline speaks louder than words. At night—if they aren’t too tired—they sit on the balcony and watch the lights of the ships passing in the night. Jack continues to try and teach Gabriel how to play guitar—which, as always, produces more fond laughter and annoyed grumbling than any actual music—and the awkward plucking of the strings mixes perfectly with the fog horns drifting in on the sea breeze. They always go to bed the same way: tangled together, deliriously happy, and hoping the other has dreams just as deliciously sweet. _

_ It’s not all pleasant. They talk, of course, because there’s still the corpse of Overwatch and the cracks in their relationship stretched out between them. At first it’s mostly yelling, because six years is a long time for frustration and sorrow and anger and bitterness to ferment and fester, and all those pent-up feelings have to be released  _ **_somehow._ ** _ They scream and point and accuse, they throw things at the walls (but never,  _ **_ever_ ** _ at each other), and they feel like they’re bleeding from their throats and their eyes. Six years is a long time to think, however, and it was more than enough time for the both of them to step away from the raw personal edges of their old arguments and see the bigger picture. This time, when they speak (shout, scream, stammer, sob), they actually  _ **_listen_ ** _ to what the other is saying instead of feeling offended and betrayed and blocking it out. Jack finally sees where Gabriel is coming from in terms of Overwatch and the UN, and Gabriel finally understands Jack’s old reluctance to believe him and relative inability to take action. When their old wounds have bled clean, their yelling fades away to quiet conversation, and it’s probably the first time the two of them have been entirely on the same page in eight years. Far too long, Jack reasons, but never too late, and Gabriel hums against his skin in agreement. _

_ “ Why Talon?” Jack asks one night, nuzzling into the crook of Gabriel’s neck as they lay in bed together. _

_ “ Why not Talon?” Gabriel shrugs. “ I had nothing else to live for after Zurich—Overwatch was gone,  _ **_you_ ** _ were gone, and I knew I had a huge hand in the fall. The only thing I could think of doing was going undercover and exposing the truth about them and the UN. Worse things to live for than justice and vengeance.” _

_ Jack nods, kisses the curve of Gabriel’s jaw, and smiles at the way Gabriel rumbles at the touch. “ Don’t know how you do it. I’d probably lose it after a day under their roof.” _

_ “ Which is one of the  _ **_valid_ ** _ reasons that I was the commander of Blackwatch and not you; you never had the patience for covert ops.” Gabriel snorts and rolls his eyes. “ It’s just another day at the office for me. I go in, growl and grandstand and preen, and then slip through the cracks while they’re all busy laughing at me and steal all their information. It’s especially easier now that Sombra’s around; if Blackwatch was still around, I’d be snapping her up in a heartbeat and making her my left-hand.” _

_ “ And the things you have to do stay in their good graces?” _

_ Gabriel stills beneath him, and something hot and painful lances through Jack’s stomach, the younger man immediately regretting asking the question. Everyone on Earth has heard about the ‘heinous crimes’ perpetrated by the notorious terrorist known as Reaper, and the way Gabriel trembles in his arms reminds Jack all too well of the way he huddled in bed after returning from numerous Blackwatch missions, shuddering and silent save to ask Jack to ‘hold me tighter, please; I feel like I’m gonna fall apart’. _

_ Jack holds him closer on instinct. “ Sorry, I shouldn’t have—“ _

_ “ No, no, don’t apologize; it’s fine.” It’s not fine, but Gabriel’s voice is steady and sure, and he turns his head to gaze at Jack as if he’s the center of his universe. “ I do what I have to do—nothing more, nothing less. I’m gonna expose all those fuckers in Talon and the UN and everyone that betrayed us in Overwatch. Then, as soon as Sombra and I have everything we need, I’m dragging Amélie out of there—kicking and screaming if I have to—and we’re all gonna tear Talon to the goddamn ground.” _

_ Jack whistles appreciatively. “ You really missed a career in drama, Gabo; do you think we can make out triumphantly on the rubble of the headquarters?” _

_ “ That’s literally the first thing on my new bucket list,” Gabriel grins and kisses the tip of Jack’s nose, “ followed by us finally getting that retirement we always talked about.” _

_ “ ‘Books, pets, and kids’?” _

_ “ Nothing more, nothing less.” Gabriel’s conviction never fails to seep into Jack and make him feel unstoppable. “ I don’t care how long it’s gonna take, or what I have to do to get it done; we’re gonna get there, Jackie. Mark my words.” _

_ “ I know.” Jack believes him—has  _ **_always_ ** _ believed him—but he’s still worried. “ Are you…are you gonna be okay, though? I don’t want you…”  _ **_To break. To have them take and take and take from you until you have nothing left to give. I always worried about that when you were on your Blackwatch missions and nothing’s changed._ **

_ Gabriel seems to hear his thoughts. “ I’ll be fine, Jackie.” He sounds less sure, but he moves to hold Jack comfortingly regardless, and his eyes drift shut as he bonks their heads together. “ No matter what they do to me, as long as we get to the end…I’ll be fine.” _

_ Jack can tell Gabriel doesn’t really believe it, but he doesn’t comment, only kisses him tenderly and tries to have enough faith for the both of them. _

* * *

Gabriel slept the whole flight to Watchpoint: Gibraltar.

In actuality, he’d also slept the entire drive from the motel back to the airport, making Jack drive one-handed the entire time due to his subconscious refusal to let the other one go. While it was worrying, it wasn’t all that surprising, because one look at Gabriel under a proper light told Jack a story of exhaustion and struggle.

Even then, five minutes from Watchpoint: Gibraltar, Jack couldn’t help but glance back at his dozing husband constantly, trying to figure out from appearance alone just what had occurred. Gabriel had seemingly dissolved his coat, gloves, and mask, and he’d only reformed his boots when they were walking out the door. His flex armor was missing, leaving him clad in only his black Kevlar undershirt and pants, which were ripped and splattered with blood and streaks of thick soot. His brown and ashen-patched arms were also scattered with flecks of blood, and while Jack could see traces of dried blood in his curly hair, Gabriel’s face was suspiciously clean outside of several sticky, dried tear tracks. Maybe he’d washed his face once he escaped from wherever-the-fuck.

Thank goodness for the plane’s autopilot, because it would’ve been far too hard for Jack to keep his mind on flying, too consumed with “what ifs” and “what happeneds” and the sea of worry sloshing tumultuously in his stomach. He could count times he’d seen Gabriel have a full-blown mental breakdown during their thirty-something-year relationship on two hands—including this event—and every trigger had been cataclysmic. It took pushing every single one of Gabriel’s buttons to get him to the point where he couldn’t simply shoulder his anger, fear, and grief in silence, and Jack’s well-being had been involved in more than half those times, so whatever Talon had done to push his husband over the edge…it wasn’t that Jack couldn’t  _ imagine _ what had happened, it was that he didn’t  _ want  _ to; his mind simply refused to comprehend the sort of event not involving Gabriel’s loved ones that could’ve left him in shambles. Besides, there would be time for speculation later; he had to take care of Gabriel first and foremost.

It was only when the plane was powered down in the hangar of Watchpoint: Gibraltar that Jack finally allowed himself to breathe.  He unbuckled his harness as quietly as he could, slid the oxygen mask off his face, and decided to leave his respirator, pack, and pulse rifle in the plane and come back to get them later. It wasn’t like anyone was around to steal them.

“ Gabo…” Jack twisted in his seat and reached back to touch him. “ Gabo, we’re here, wake up.”

The moment Jack’s hand brushed Gabriel’s knee, the older man instantly snapped awake, his entire body jolting as if struck by a cattle prod. A wave of black smoke burst from his pores as he glanced around wildly, and it wasn’t until his red and brown eyes met Jack’s through the smoke that he relaxed, groaning and scrubbing his face with his fists.

“ Shit, sorry, Jackie…”

“ No need to apologize.” Jack mentally kicked himself for sounding so eager. “ We’re, uh, here. At Gibraltar.”

“ Already?” Gabriel blinked owlishly and moved to unfasten his harness. “  _ Christ,  _ did I sleep the whole damn way across the ocean?”

“ Well, to be fair, you’ve been through a lot.” Jack shrugged, at a loss for what ‘a lot’ could’ve entailed, and ‘hopped’ (rather, gingerly stepped; he wasn’t as young as he used to be) out of the plane, holding up a hand to help Gabriel out as soon as he was on the ground. “ We beat sunset, at least.”

“ I’ve been in America for two months—jetlag’s going to kick my ass.” Despite Gabriel’s somewhat petulant grumbling, he took Jack’s hand as eagerly as the other man had spoken, hopping out with a grace that Jack’s aching knees envied. “ God, last time I was here, it was during that Talon raid. Didn’t manage to get a good look at the place after all these years…”

“ Not much has changed, honestly.” With their hands interlocked, Jack lead Gabriel out of the hangar and into the fading sun and cool breeze of the Watchpoint, unable to keep a smile off his face as Gabriel leaned his head against his shoulder. “ A little more overgrown and rickety than before, but everything still runs like it used to. That ex-Vishkar agent’s been helping to build the place back up, but Winston really needs to get some of the kids to do work around the base.”

A snort. “ ‘Kids’?”

“ Shut up, Gabo.”

Even after all these years, Gabriel’s quiet, rumbling laughter felt like warm honey seeping into his veins. “ Settle down, Boy Scout; I just think it’s kinda cute. Also funny, since your youngest ‘kid’ is nineteen.”

“ She’s the one that started calling me dad and referring to herself as my kid in the first place.” Jack’s voice took on the fond yet exasperated tone Gabriel had come to expect when discussing Hana Song. “ I guess Lucio and Lena found it funny and just went along with it. God knows I do enough cat-corralling to deserve the title.”

Gabriel nodded against Jack’s shoulder. “ Hey, sunbeam, I get it. God knows I think of Sombra as my own half of the time. I don’t think there’s ever an age where you can stop being called someone’s kid.”

“ Yeah…you don’t stop being someone’s child just because you get older.” Jack’s tone was wistful, and he gave Gabriel’s hand a fond squeeze; they’d always wanted—but were never able to have—children of their own. It was one of the many painful ironies of them giving lives to an organization that repaid them, in turn, by throwing them under two different busses.

Instead of heading towards the barracks for peripheral personnel—where he usually slept—Jack instead directed them towards the central hub of the compound. It was here where the new Overwatch ate, spent its free time, and—excluding Jack—slept. Winston had been magnanimous enough to give Jack his own room back—the quarters specifically reserved for the Strike Commander that he and Gabriel had shared until their ‘deaths’.  Jack had awkwardly turned him down, preferring to sleep in the peripheral barracks where he could have ‘some goddamn peace and quiet’ (as well as call his undercover husband in secret), but he nonetheless spent a couple days a week keeping their old quarters clean and organized. He’d spent his first week at Gibraltar dusting, sweeping, and washing and airing out all the linens; hell, he’d even washed the windows, and the rest of the team had been utterly mystified as to why he scrubbed a room he never used.

“ Old habits die hard.” He’d quipped as he carried the baskets of clothing he and Gabriel had left behind down to the laundry room to wash. “ Old habits die hard”, he’d muttered again, when Mercy had asked him why he was washing Gabriel’s clothes along with his own.  It was an excuse that those associated with the old Overwatch bought easily, and Jack let them stare at him when they thought he wasn’t looking, practically feeling them sighing sadly and shaking their heads as he folded Gabriel’s shirts, whistling as cheerily as they’d heard him in ages. Their ‘subtle’ pitying expressions told him all he needed to know: that they thought he was just an old man in denial over the long-lost husband that betrayed him and tried to have him killed. ‘Poor Jack Morrison’, he imagined them whispering behind his back, ‘unable to move on from a dead man that didn’t even love him in the end’.

In all honesty, even if they had known that Gabriel was alive and working as a double-agent under the alias of Reaper, Jack would’ve been too embarrassed to tell them the _real_ reason he refused to sleep in his old room and why he made such a fuss about keeping it presentable and clean. It just didn’t feel _right_ , sleeping in that big bed without Gabriel, especially with said man risking life and limb to protect everyone from the shadows. One day, he thought, Gabriel would stop being Reaper and come back to Gibraltar for good, and Jack wanted him to have a safe, clean, warm place ready for him to return to—a place where he could finally rest.

In an ironic twist, Jack had last tidied up their quarters two days before, so the bed was still freshly made and the surfaces were free of dust. Gabriel stood awkwardly by the bathroom door (probably, Jack reasoned, because he didn’t want to sit on the bed or chairs while wearing bloody pants) as Jack busied himself with opening the blinds and cracking the window, and the older man sighed in contentment as a wave of cool, salty air hit his face.

“ God, I missed this. Didn’t even have the time to enjoy the view during that Talon raid.”

“ I highly doubt Winston would’ve let you take in the scenery after you broke into his house and tased him.” Gabriel’s dark skin took on a radiant sheen in the orange glow of the early sunset light, and Jack couldn’t help but swallow at the sight, amazed at how his husband was still as stupidly handsome as he’d been the day they met. “ How ‘bout you shower while I get us something to eat? You hungry for anything in particular?”

“ Something warm.” Gabriel shrugged and glanced at the chest of drawers on the far wall. “ Are any of my real clothes still here?”

“ They didn’t touch this place after Zurich—maybe outta respect, I dunno, or maybe they thought we’d haunt the place.” Jack opened the top drawer, pulled out a pair of Gabriel’s pajamas, and tossed them at him. “ I washed them with mine when I got back to the base—everything was musty as hell. Took me three days to clean house.”

“ And everyone calls me the domestic one.” Gabriel grumbled and sniffed appreciatively at the faded cotton in his hands. “ Heh, they still smell fresh, too. Thanks, babe.”

“ No worries.” Jack shrugged nonchalantly and tried not to blush at  _ that _ nickname. “ Is soup okay?”

“ Sounds good to me; you’re pretty okay with soup when you don’t drown it in water.” Gabriel rolled his eyes and smiled teasingly at Jack before turning his attention to the window, staring out at the cliffs of Gibraltar with a distant, hooded gaze. “ And don’t rush too much, Jackie…I need some time to think.”

* * *

_ It starts like this: _

_ It takes two months after their reunion for the world to come crashing back in. _

_ It begins with a call from Talon. “ Urgent business,” they say, “and we need someone with access to Watchpoint: Gibraltar”. The mission: hack Athena, steal the database of all surviving Overwatch agents, and neutralize the rogue agent known as Winston. Gabriel accepts, of course; he has no choice if he wants to keep up his charade. _

_ “ Will you have to kill him?” Jack whispers against the crook of Gabriel’s neck as they stand in the doorway. The conjured polymer of Reaper’s mask taps against his forehead. _

_ “ No, not if I play my cards right, and I’m damn good at this game by now.” Jack hates how muffled and distorted Gabriel’s voice sounds from behind the mask. “ Will you wait here for me, Jackie?” _

_ “ Always.” The answer’s instantaneous, and Gabriel squeezes him tightly before releasing him with a reluctance they both feel, not bothering to look back as he walks out the front door and closes it quietly behind him. _

_ Jack understands: their goodbyes were always unbearable if they didn’t make them quick. _

_Two days later, Jack’s old Overwatch communicator beeps for the first time in six years, and he feels both relief and dread at the sight of the recall order flashing across the holoscreen. On one hand, it means Winston’s still alive and kicking (because that move is_ ** _so_** _classic_ _Winston it hurts), but on the other hand, it means the mission failed. Jack never thought he’d feel so much angst over a botched_ ** _Talon_** _mission, for Christ’s sake, but he spends the next two days being unable to eat and praying that Winston didn’t somehow find a way to kill Gabriel permanently._

_ Gabriel finally comes home at the end of the fourth day. They’re on each other instantly, kissing like it’s the end of the world, and they spend the next few hours in bed, making love and drowning in the feel of skin on skin. It’s only after they’re both spent—soaked in sweat and limbs entangled—that Gabriel tells Jack the details about the intentionally-FUBAR’d mission. _

_ “ Did you get the recall message?” Jack whispers against Gabriel’s chest. _

_ “ Yeah.” Gabriel sounds as old as Jack feels. One dark hand moves to stroke the pale back while the other arm wraps around pale shoulders. “ Are you going to go?” _

_ “ What? Just walk up to Winston’s doorstep, take off my mask, and shout ‘surprise, I’m not dead’?” Jack scoffs and noses the damp curls on Gabriel’s chest. “ Bring back Overwatch…what’s the point, Gabo?” _

_ “ I don’t know, Jack…Overwatch is a sad story that should’ve ended long before Zurich.” Gabriel takes a moment to fiddle with his wedding ring before continuing. “ One thing I do know, though, is that every good operation needs an inside man.” _

_ “ An inside man?” _

_ “ Don’t be dense, sunbeam.” Gabriel snorts and boops Jack’s nose (a habit, Jack suspects, that he’s picked up from Sombra). “ You really don’t think some of those Talon agents that were undercover in Overwatch won’t jump at the chance to undermine it all again? Winston may be smart, but he’s too trusting, and he’s not used to being in command. You could help him, and you could help me, too.” _

_ Jack doesn’t feel enthused at the prospect, but he understands where Gabriel’s coming from, and the old soldier in him begins to rouse from dormancy. “ So I’d be a double agent for a double agent. As if I didn’t have my own shit going that I’d have to give up to go play hero again.” _

_ “ What? Beating a gang member to death with a piñata on your schedule or something?” _

_ “ Fuck off.” Jack grumbles and Gabriel laughs sunshine. _

_ “ Come on, Jackie, you know I’m right.” _

_ Jack thinks for a moment before nodding. Yes, he was right, and he hated it. _

_ Within a week they’ve locked the odds and ends they’d gathered during their two-month vacation into storage and handed the keys to the house back to the owner. Three days later, Soldier: 76 arrives at Watchpoint: Gibraltar, with his heavy pulse rifle strapped to his back and a private communicator linked to Reaper tucked away in his jacket pocket. _

_ Jack’s accepted back into Overwatch with open arms that he doesn’t expect, doesn’t  _ **_deserve_ ** _ , but is nonetheless grateful for. “ I told you so”, Gabriel smarms when they talk next, and Jack wishes he could smack his head through the phone. _

_ Several months pass. Jack and Gabriel try to call each other at least once a day, but their respective missions often throw wrenches in their plans, so sometimes several weeks go by before they hear from one another. It was worrying, and lonely, but both were used to such gaps in communication from their old lives. When they do talk, Gabriel doesn’t say much outside of the necessary exchanges of information and planning, so Jack finds himself doing the talking for both of them. There’s not much to talk about, though, because there’s always the risk of someone listening in. Sometimes they call each other at night just to listen to each other breathing, and they fall asleep with their phones resting on the other pillow, letting the muffled sounds from the other line lull them into dreams of warmth, flesh, and touch. _

_ They spend their thirty-second wedding anniversary apart. Both of them pretend not to notice. _

* * *

Unfortunately, despite his decent prowess at making soup, a quick look in the fridge confirmed that Jack had planned to go shopping that very day for a good reason. Fortunately, Hanzo had made him an abundance of miso soup and rice for him to eat while the rest of the team was gone (claiming that he didn’t trust Jack to “remember to cook for himself” with no one else there, which would’ve upset Jack if he wasn’t the type that had to set alarms on his phone to remember to eat regularly), and it was a soup he knew Gabriel liked relatively well. Hell, he’d take it; it wasn’t like he could order take-out to the Watchpoint, and Gabriel probably needed to eat something healthy anyways. He made a mental note to thank Hanzo for the food when he returned to Gibraltar and put the soup and rice on the stove to heat up.

While the food was slowly heating, Jack took the time himself to shower in the common washroom and change into his favorite pair of soft, loose blue pajamas (he’d have to remember transfer his clothes and toiletries from the common washroom to their own tomorrow). By the time Jack finished washing up and checking-in with Winston, Hana, and Lucio by text—since he didn’t think he could handle a verbal conversation with anyone that wasn’t Gabriel at that moment—the food was warm and the sun had set, giving way to an inky night sky dotted with scattered clouds and sprinkled with stars.  _ Plenty of time for Gabo to be alone, right?  _ Jack shook away his anxious thoughts and grabbed two bowls of soup and rice to carry upstairs. Honestly, given Gabriel’s state of mind, it probably wasn’t a good idea to leave him alone for long in the first place.

Gabriel was lying in bed when Jack entered the room, clad in an old, forest-green robe that Jack knew was one of his favorites. For a moment, the younger man thought he was asleep, but his head shot up at the sound of the bedroom door sliding shut behind Jack.

“ You showered downstairs?” Gabriel slowly sat up and quirked a scarred eyebrow at his husband. “I  _ thought  _ the bathroom didn’t look used. You have your pajamas downstairs, too? Why haven’t you been sleeping in here, you goof?”

Jack blushed and huffed before handing Gabriel one of the bowls of soup. “ It’s not just  _ my  _ room; it’s  _ our  _ room, remember? And you haven’t exactly been around…” He trailed off, staring down at the bowl of soup in his hands to avoid seeing the disarmed, unusually delicate expression spreading across Gabriel’s face. “ Just…just didn’t feel right, is all. Not without you here.”

“ Jackie…” Gabriel’s voice sounded as vulnerable as he looked.

After a moment of silence, Jack heard Gabriel set the bowl on the bedside table and scoot closer to him, and it took all his willpower to keep from looking up. Was he afraid of what he might find if he did? What he might do? “ You should eat before the soup gets cold.” His voice sounded fake-as-hell, even to his own ears. “ Hope it tastes okay; I didn’t make it myself, so that should be a plus in its favor—”

“ Jack.” Gabriel’s voice was quiet and hoarse and cut right through his fumbling like a knife through butter. “ Jack, please…please look at me.”

As if gripped and yanked by an unseen force, Jack’s head stiffly creaked upwards, and his breath caught in his chest the moment his eyes met Gabriel’s, and goddamnit,  _ goddamnit,  _ he  _ knew  _ this would happen if he looked at Gabriel, and he was trying to be a responsible, rational fucking adult who had his priorities in order (i.e. knowing that Gabriel, being traumatized by  _ something, _ likely needed food and sleep before anything else), but he lost the battle the moment he looked into Gabriel’s eyes, because thirty-some years later and they were both still utterly  _ helpless  _ in the face of the other looking so goddamn  _ fragile  _ and  _ needy.  _  They’d always assumed that the urge to drop everything for each other would fade along with the ‘honeymoon’ phase, but surprise, surprise, they were pushing sixty and still as fucking besotted with each other as they were when they first got together. So  _ no,  _ they had gotten over  _ nothing,  _ and Jack wasn’t exactly sure if he was complaining about or celebrating that fact.

“ Jackie,” Gabriel pleaded, as if him looking at Jack with pure desperation wasn’t enough to have Jack toss all rational thought out the window, “ Sunbeam, I…”

At that moment, only one thought crossed Jack Morrison’s mind:

_ Fuck the soup. _

Jack flung the bowl across the room, and he dimly heard it splat and shatter against some hard surface, but  _ seriously,  _ **_fuck it._ ** He was on the bed before he could even register the movement, and Gabriel couldn’t be in his arms fast enough, and Gabriel’s lips couldn’t be on his fast enough, but he was, and they were, and fuck,  _ fuck. _

They kissed like it was the day of their reunion. Gabriel was gripping the back of Jack’s pajama shirt as if he’d be ripped away if he let go, and Jack shifted so that he was kneeling in front of him, one arm wrapped around his back and the other cradling his head as he gently angled it to and fro, looking to deepen the kiss and receiving a moan of appreciation when he succeeded. Gabriel’s mouth was as warm, welcoming, and wet as it had been before his death, and though the familiar taste was now tinged with a bitter acridness that had taken some getting used to, it was still completely  _ Gabriel  _ underneath it all. Jack loved the taste—loved  _ him.  _  He loved the permanent gap in his lower lip and the pale patches scattered across his dark skin, loved the deep, thick, warped scars that cut across his chest, back, and shoulders, loved the dark smoke that poured off him whenever he got excited, loved the flecks of red dotting his dark brown irises, loved the faint gray strands in his dark curls and beard, loved that he was the only one that had ever and would ever be allowed to see Gabriel this way—vulnerable and soft and needy and completely pliant in his surrender. He loved that he was the only one that Gabriel had ever truly trusted, loved that he was the only one Gabriel had ever truly loved, loved that he was the only one Gabriel ever  _ wanted _ to love, even after everything he had taken from him and all the hurt he’d given in return, even though there was no way in hell he deserved him. He loved him, loved him, loved him,  _ loved him _ —loved him so much it made it hard to breathe when he thought about it. Gabriel, Gabriel, Gabriel,  _ Gabriel. _

“ God, yes,  _ Jack… _ ” Gabriel pulled his mouth away from Jack’s long enough to moan. “ Please, I…I don’t want to fuck…I just…” He groaned blissfully as Jack’s mouth moved to attack his neck, eyes fluttering close as he moved his arms to loop around his shoulders. “ Please, just  _ touch me _ , Jack.”

_ Christ,  _ Jack’s brain almost shorted out, because he’d never heard Gabriel sound like  _ that _ before—like he’d wither and die if Jack didn’t lay his hands on him. “ Whatever you want,” he whispered against Gabriel’s right ear, biting down on the lobe (and earning another beautiful whine in return) as his hands moved to his husband’s waist. Even with his nervous shaking—because there was a gravity to the situation that he couldn’t quite place—the tie of the robe came undone easily, and Jack slipped his hands through the sides almost greedily, seeking out the warm flesh within.

The moment Jack’s cold hands came into contact with those heated sides, Gabriel’s breath hitched, and every muscle of his body seemed to tighten and tense—almost as if bracing for a blow.

“ Gabo?” Jack’s hands stilled instantly. “ You alright?”

“ Why wouldn’t I be?” The sudden flatness of Gabriel’s voice made alarm well up in the base of Jack’s throat.

“I…we…” Jack swallowed dryly and thumbed at Gabriel’s sides in what he hoped was a soothing gesture. “ We, uh, don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. You know that, right?”

“ Of  _ course  _ I do, Jackie.” Even though Jack could practically  _ feel _ Gabriel rolling his eyes over his shoulder, there was a barely-perceptible waver in those words, and the muscles under his hands relaxed ever so slightly.

“ Well, I’m just making sure, is all…” Jack suddenly felt like the most awkward person in existence—which, considering how awkward he’d felt just a few minutes beforehand, was quite an accomplishment. “ You just seem—“  _ Traumatized?  _ “—tense, is all. Wanna make sure you’re not forcing yourself to do something you don’t want to. I mean, I’m not saying you are, I’m just saying that I’m…I’m okay with whatever, is what I’m saying.”  _ Oh my God, Jack, just shut up. Shut up before something even stupider comes out of your dumb fucking mouth. _

For a long moment, Gabriel was silent, and Jack was in the middle of mentally punching himself in the face for being  _ so fucking awkward holy fucking  _ **_Christ_ ** when he started to laugh. It wasn’t a mean laugh, but the laugh he saved for Jack and Jack alone, and it never failed to make Jack flush from happiness and embarrassment, because his broad, brown chest would rumble from delight, and the laughter itself would be brimming with a strange sort of enamored wonder—as if Jack was something so precious and miraculous that it was hard to believe he even existed. He pulled away from Jack to look him in the eyes, and if Jack hadn’t been blushing enough before, he felt like he was  _ steaming  _ under the utter adoration of that gaze.

“ You’re something else, you know that, Jackie?” Gabriel cupped Jack’s face in a large, calloused hand, and the younger man practically  _ purred  _ at the touch.

“ Don’t make fun of me.” Jack didn’t even try to put any strength into his grumbling. “ I’m trying to be supportive, ya jerk.” He nuzzled into his husband’s palm and licked playfully at the thumb that moved to caress his lips, earning another delighted bark in the process.

“ I’m not. Honest.” Gabriel moved his hands to Jack’s waist and gently yanked him closer, making the younger man shuffle forward on his knees. “ You’re just…you’re something  _ special.  _ You always have been. Something shining and golden that I haven’t found anywhere else. Hell, even after everything, you’re still glowing.”

“ ‘m not.”

“ Yes, you  _ are. _ You’re so goddamn bright, sometimes I can’t stand it.”

There was something haunted blooming in Gabriel’s eyes that Jack had never seen before—which unnerved him more than he cared to admit, really, because he’d seen Gabriel at his worst and below but had  _ never  _ seen him look like that.

“ Gabriel…” Without thinking, Jack slipped his hands into Gabriel’s robe and around his waist, tracing spirals on the ever-shifting skin of his back. “ You shine too, y’know?”

Gabriel snorted in amusement. “ You think so?” His eyes fluttered closed as Jack massaged circles into his spine, and he took Jack spreading his legs as the invitation that it was to scoot closer, sagging against the younger man’s chest and resting his head on his shoulder. “ Think you might be a little biased, Jackie.”

“ And you aren’t?” Jack snorted. “ ‘sides, just ‘cause I’m biased, doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

Gabriel hummed non-committedly, practically melting as Jack worked the muscles of his back and shoulders with practiced fingers, and his own started kneading Jack’s flanks through his pajama top. Despite how they’d gotten there, it was similar to hundreds of nights they’d spent together in the past, sheltered in each other’s arms and wrapped in the blissful quiet of what peace they managed to find amidst the chaos. In the end, all they had ever needed was each other, and they’d long stopped feeling guilty of that fact.

“ Jackie.”

“ Hmm?”

Gabriel’s voice was as faint as the rustling of the curtains in the wind. “ You’re the only one that’s ever seen me like this…you know that, right?”

Jack’s breath stilled in his throat, because while he had no earthly idea what Gabriel was even talking about, there was a quicksilver edge to his words that made him shiver. It was the kind of determination that entered Gabriel’s voice when he was passionate, resolute, steadfast—when he was stepping forward with no regrets and no looking back. The former Strike Commander had no idea what had put the steel back into his husband’s voice, but he wasn’t going to deny him his conviction, even if he had no earthly idea what was going on.

“ Yeah…I know, Gabo.”

“ And you’re the only one—“ Gabriel’s hands wrapped around Jack’s waist and  _ squeezed _ , “—you’re the only one that will  _ ever  _ see me like this. Do you understand, Jack? Do you  _ understand _ ?”

The quicksilver was tarnished with desperation. It made Jack cling back even tighter.

“ I understand, Gabriel.” He didn’t, but for Gabriel, he’d pretend. “ I understand. I do.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: I'm so sorry.
> 
> You see the first three tags on this work? They come into play this chapter. The first bit is a world building/headcanon-heavy/plot flashback that's pretty harmless, but if non-graphic talk of attempted rape, sexual assault, and/or violence is too much for you to handle, stop reading after the section in italics and wait for the next chapter.
> 
> It's non-descriptive/graphic, and it focuses mainly on the feelings surrounding a traumatic event along with lots of fluff and comfort, but the warning still stands. Stop reading after the section in italics if it might be too much.

_It starts like this:_

_One night, Jack gets a call from Gabriel out of the blue._

_“ Talk to me, Jack.” Gabriel’s voice is soft and strangled. “ It’s too quiet. I need…I need something else to think about. Please.”_

_“ Of course.” Jack sits up in bed and glances at the clock without really caring. Over the past few months, his conversations with Gabriel have become shorter and shorter, and Gabriel has grown more distant by the day. It was the same thing that happened when he was out on long Blackwatch missions—when the specters of his actions, while necessary, clung to his ankles and refused to let go—and Jack knows that states like this make it horrifyingly easy for the other man to pull so deep into himself that it's hard to climb out. Gabriel needs an anchor—a connection to the man he was when not drowning in darkness—and Jack has become an expert at calling him back to the here and now. “ You wanna talk about anything specific?”_

_There is a pause and a rattling sigh from the other end of the line. “ Talk to me about everyone. Tell me how they’re doing—what’s changed, who’s new, that kind of thing.”_

_Jack hesitates. “ Are you sure, Gabo?” After all, Gabriel himself had told him early on in their scheme that he didn’t want to hear any unnecessary details about the Overwatch members over the comm, since there was always the risk of being tapped by Talon and putting everyone in the revived organization in danger._

_“For the love of…” Gabriel sighs and Jack can’t tell if it’s one of frustration or desperation. “ Please, Jackie, I know what I said, but…please.”_

_So Jack tells him._

_He tells Gabriel about Tracer: how she was the first one to answer the call, about how Zurich and the following years hadn't dampened her idealism, and how she still wears the bomber jacket with the emblem that Gabriel embroidered for her all those years ago. He tells him about her girlfriend Emily—a PhD in quantum physics that Tracer met by time-jumping into her lab by accident—and how she’s already planning on visiting Gibraltar within the next month (and, as Jack tells Gabriel, he’s pretty sure Emily’s going to propose at the end of the year, and Winston, of course, will most likely walk Tracer down the figurative or literal aisle). He tells Gabriel about how Jesse’s only gotten better with a gun as the years have passed, and how he’s still obsessed with those old western movies and shows, even though he’s probably watched every episode of Bonanza at least twenty times in his lifetime. He also tells him about how much he misses Gabriel and how tempting it has been to tell him the truth about their charade; he will be the first to accept Gabriel when he finally comes home, he promises._

_He tells him about how Genji went to Nepal and came back with a new sense of serenity and an Omnic monk devoted to peace and equality against all odds, even if it means surprisingly precise sniping with his floating energy synchronizers. Tekhartha Zenyatta has also begun working on cracking the shell Genji’s older brother, Hanzo, who showed up several weeks after his younger sibling rejoined the fold (it had been a hard pill to swallow for the old vanguard—having Genji’s ‘murderer’ join the new Overwatch—but as Genji had told them soon after, the story behind the attempted fratricide was complicated at best, and they had reluctantly agreed to give him a chance). Jack doesn’t talk about Mercy—knowing how Gabriel feels about her 'mutilating' his body after death—but when he mentions that only one member of the old organization continues to protest Hanzo’s presence at Gibraltar, the older man gives a knowing hum, obviously remembering how protective she has always been of Genji._

_He tells Gabriel about Hana Song—the ambitious young gamer turned war hero of South Korea. Gabriel has already heard of D.va and her exploits, so Jack tells him about the girl behind the computer: about how she loves shrimp chips, dried squid, and Chinese takeout; about how she started playing Starcraft in the first place as a way to try (and mostly fail) to connect with her absentee father; about how she always wears fuzzy knit socks with creative patterns and brilliant colors to warm her perpetually cold feet; about how he always knows when she’s had another nightmare about roaring giant omnics and battered, broken bodies because he hears her rattling pans around in the kitchen late at night when he's on guard duty. He always goes to talk to her, of course, because he's an old hat at dealing with this sort of thing, and they always end up sitting on the couch until early in the morning, Hana leaning into his side as they sip homemade hot chocolate and watch those crime documentary shows she loves until the sun rises over the Gibraltar Strait. Then there is Lucio, who oftentimes wakes up because of the sound of the TV and comes down to join them, able to cheer up Hana like no other. The DJ came with her when she joined up, carrying a bag of soccer balls and hockey equipment (both ice and field) and a battery of sound technology, lethal and not. Torbjorn has been a great help in maintaining his bionic legs, beefing up their superstructure and extending the length of the wall ride feature so that Lucio will never have to touch ground again if he doesn't want to, something which the young man adores and takes advantage of on base. He and Hana spend most of their free time together; Hana will listen to his latest tracks and give her (extremely colorful and enthusiastic) commentary on them, and Lucio will guest on her game streams, talking and laughing with her as she blows up whatever enemy is on screen at the time. Watching them often makes Jack wonder if Jesse would’ve been happier in Overwatch if he’d had someone his own age to associate with that wasn’t as ‘out of his league’ as Mercy._

_Jack talks for several hours. He talks about the two off-the-wall Australians that randomly rolled into base one day, carrying a ‘secret treasure’ and leaving a rap sheet two miles long in their wake—one as big as a house, the other somehow always on fire. He talks about how Mei wandered in after her sojourn with a burly Russian weightlifter-turned-soldier under her arm, the two having apparently met in Siberia after Zarya saved Mei from a particularly ferocious bear while on patrol; it had practically been love at first bear-suplex. He talks about how Torbjorn returned to the fold with Reinhardt, Brigitte, and (to the surprise of everyone in the old guard) a sentient Bastion unit that he’d ‘hunted down’ several months before. Despite Torbjorn’s hatred of omnics, he’d seen potential in the sentient robot, and it soon became apparent to everyone that Bastion was far more interested in examining each individual flower growing on the base and beeping to his little bird companion than killing humans. He talks about the architect from the Vishkar Corporation that defected to Overwatch after having learned about a particularly nasty plot of her employer’s to force people out of a barrio for corporate development. Her actions had earned her the respect of Fareeha (as proud, strong, and valiant as her mother, and the only person in twenty-some years that could say they’d successfully neutralized a God Program), and the two can often be seen talking at the dining room table, sipping tea and discreetly holding hands. Ana had not been ready to join Overwatch when Jack had, as she still has “things to sweep up” before she comes out of retirement for good, but she brims with motherly approval whenever Jack tells her about the hard-light flowers Satya leaves on Fareeha’s bed when she isn't looking. She misses Gabriel, despite his violent actions that one time in Egypt, and Jack won't be surprised if she doesn't already suspect Gabriel’s double-agent nature after his blatant failure to kill her despite all his talk. She will have stern words to give him when the truth comes out, that's for sure, but also a lot of hugs and tears._

_Overwatch isn't the same as it had been, but it was still good, and maybe—probably—better than before._

_When Jack finally stops talking—mouth dry and head drained of daily anecdotes—he can hear Gabriel’s hitching, whimpering breath on the other end. He stays silent, knowing that what Gabriel needs at that moment more than anything else is a silent ear and a shoulder to cry on, even if such things can only be given over a phone line._

_Finally, he asks “are you still here, Gabo?”_

_There is nothing but sobbing on the other end, but Jack can hear the unspoken “yes” drifting between them, and that's the only reply he needs._

* * *

When Jack woke up a few hours later, Gabriel was sitting on the balcony, legs jutting over the edge from between the bars of the railing.

“ Gabo?” With a groan, Jack pushed himself up and slid off the bed, padding quietly over to his husband. He noticed that the bowl he’d broken in his haste to embrace Gabriel had been cleaned up—the shards and rice had been picked up and a damp spot remained on the carpet from where the soup had been mopped up with a wet rag—and the other bowl was resting next to Gabriel on the balcony, completely empty. At least he’d eaten something at long last.

“ Gabriel?” Jack ventured again, and this time Gabriel seemed to hear him, his head jolting up as if he’d been woken from a dream.

“ Oh, Jack, it’s you…” Gabriel turned to look at his husband, his lips quirking upwards into a soft, tired smile. “  Sorry. Couldn’t sleep.  Thought the cold might make me tired.”

“ And did it?” Jack slipped out onto the balcony, gently nudged the empty bowl aside with his foot, and sat down next to him.

“ Dunno. Maybe. I’ve been some kind of tired since I’ve gotten here, really.” Gabriel’s eyes trained on a speck of light in the distance—most likely belonging to a cargo ship traversing the inky waves of the midnight strait. “ Jet lag gets worse when you get older, you know.”

“ Trust me, I’m well aware.” Jack’s hand inched over the concrete and laced itself with Gabriel’s. His dark, mottled fingers were icy to the touch; he must have been sitting out there for a while. “ Do you…uh…wanna talk about it? You know—about what happened.”

Gabriel’s fingers stiffened against his. “ Not really, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t talk about it. Probably’ll eat me alive if I keep going like this.”

“ Ya don’t have to talk about it tonight, though. We can wait. _I_ can wait, however long it takes you. You know that.”

“ Yeah, yeah, I know…”

A particularly large wave crashed against the cliff, spreading a mist of cold, damp, and salt through the air.

“ Do you wanna try to sleep again?”

Gabriel hummed noncommittally. “ Sure, why not? Maybe getting warm after freezing my ass off will do the trick.”

They left the empty bowl on the balcony as they headed back to bed, and Gabriel notched himself against Jack the moment they laid down and covered up, resting his head on the younger man’s chest and winding his arms around his waist. The pressure of Gabriel’s thick arms between his back and the bed was strangely comforting to Jack, and he was content to just enjoy the closeness in silence, with one hand resting on the small of Gabriel’s back and the other carding his fingers through his thick, black curls. For a few minutes, everything seemed _normal,_ mundane even. If only they could’ve pretended that nothing was wrong.

“ Jackie?” Gabriel’s low voice was almost violent in the way it broke the silence.

“ Yeah, Gabo?”

Gabriel took in a deep breath, held it for several seconds, and blew it out all at once. “ I was right, you know?”

“ Right? About what?”

“ About Widowmaker beginning to suspect I was betraying Talon.”

Jack’s breath hitched. “ Oh.”

“ Yeah. Didn’t find out how much until I reported in for a job they were offering me. Wouldn’t tell me what it was—said it was ‘classified’ and the instructions had to be relayed in person.” Gabriel’s voice took on the impersonal tone he used whenever he had to deliver painful mission reports. “ Didn’t seem suspicious, at first; the higher-ups at Talon tend to give the important missions in person in case someone’s listening in on the communication lines. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary—they let me walk right up to the front door and let me in like always. The next thing I know, a guard’s zapping me until I could smell my flesh burning through the pain, and I blacked out.”

“ _Christ._ ” Jack winced and gave Gabriel’s shoulder a comforting squeeze. Between the increased tolerance to pain and resistance to pretty much goddamn everything given to him by SEP program, to his “unique” nanite-and-flesh body composition, it was an understatement to say that it’d take more than your average taser to knock Gabriel out. The stun gun they used must’ve packed the electrical punch of a cut power line. “ They must’ve _really_ wanted you down for the count, huh?”

“ Given the fact that they didn’t know the extent of my abilities until today, it was almost overkill.” Gabriel’s voice grew impossibly flatter, and he buried his nose into the hollow of Jack’s throat before continuing. “ When I woke up, I was in one of their interrogation rooms, chained up against the wall with those bright fucking lights shining in my face. The cuffs had electromagnetic locks, which they probably thought would disable my nanites and keep me from escaping, which is _also_ fucking stupid when you put a moment of thought into it.”

“ Yeah, I mean, if they did find a way to deactivate your nanites, you’d just…disintegrate for good, right?” Jack shuddered at the thought.

“ Yeah, pretty much; lucky for me that death-by-separation-of-every-atom-of-my-body is pretty much fucking impossible. As much as I’m bitter about it, I have to admit that—even when it’s flawed—Angela’s tech is pretty solid. The little fuckers are insulated as hell and regenerate faster than anything could possibly kill them; if they found a substance that could kill them, they’d just out-regenerate the poison. They could try to find a way to hack into all of them and shut them down, but Sombra and I already experimented with that; believe me, if _she_ can’t shut down the little bastards, nothing can. They’re even immune to EMP pulses, and if someone _really_ tried to fuck me over and break my spine or something, well, surprise! Turns out the nanites like to store themselves in my nerves and spinal cord, which makes them practically indestructible.” Jack felt Gabriel’s lips curl into a shit-eating grin against his skin. “ Almost makes the constant burning and stinging worth it.”

“ Almost, huh…” Jack hummed and tapped out a pattern against Gabriel’s back. During their two-month reunion, Jack had introduced the idea of finding a way to replicate the process used to turn Gabriel into a wraith and using it on himself, and the more Jack talked about it with Gabriel, the more Gabriel seemed to warm up to the idea (despite constantly reminding Jack that he’d be trading a relatively normal body for one that was disintegrating and constantly in pain, and **_no_ ** _, your arthritis is_ **_not_ ** _similar, Jackie_ ); in fact, Gabriel had actually brought up the topic himself during a meeting in Russia several months ago, and he actually sounded somewhat _enthused_ at the prospect of an immortal husband to spend the rest of however-long with. Gabriel’s discussion of his powers had merely reminded him to bring up the idea again, but it would have to be much, _much_ later. “ But Talon didn’t know all that, right?”

“ Only what you can see on the battlefield—that I can regenerate, teleport, and ghost through things. The last thing I needed was for them to figure out I was a sentient iCloud and try to capture me for experimentation. Plus, I figured that they might find out the truth about me being a double agent one day, and I wanted to make sure I’d have a backdoor in case things went south. The less they knew about my powers, the less they’d be able to counter me, and the easier my escape would be.”

“ But you stayed in the interrogation room?”

“ At first.” Jack didn’t know if Gabriel was shuddering from disgust or fear, but the action disturbed him all the same, and he reached down to pull the covers over his husband’s shoulders for lack of anything else to do. “ I knew from Talon’s own correspondence that they’re running out of mercenaries to do their dirty work, and given that I’m the former commander of Blackwatch _and_ am practically indestructible, I was ‘an asset they couldn’t afford to lose’, to quote the one of the head honchos. I knew that if I could just play helpless and bear the torture without blowing my cover, they’d probably figure that Widowmaker was blowing a lot of hot air, and I’d be able to continue working for them.”

Jack felt bile begin to work its way up his throat. “ You mean you were gonna let them _torture_ you?!”

“ If it would let me keep my cover, then yeah, I would.” Jack didn’t like how nonchalant Gabriel sounded at the idea—like he was talking about going to the grocery store instead of being waterboarded. “ If it would help us bring down Talon and those fuckers in the UN and save the goddamn world from the Second Omnic Crisis, and if it would help get Amélie back and keep all of you safe, then they could shove bamboo skewers up my nails for all I care. It’s not like they didn’t prepare us for that sort of thing in the SEP.”

“ Yeah, but still…” Jack himself shuddered at the memory of learning how to ‘resist interrogation at the hands of the omnics’ during their days in basic and beyond. It involved horrifically vivid VR training and was _not_ something he liked to think back on. “ Look, if you were so willing to let yourself get fucking _tortured_ —and we’re going to talk about _that_ later—what made you change your mind? You blew up a fucking base, Gabo; that doesn’t come from nowhere.”

“ Because they didn’t do any of those things.”

“ Huh? What do you mean?”

Gabriel sighed. Then, “they tried to rape me, Jack.”

Jack hadn’t known that a brain could come to a complete screeching halt until that moment.

**“ _What?!_ ”**

To Jack’s surprise, Gabriel actually _laughed_ (a rough, barking sort of thing, but a laugh nonetheless), so the incredulity on his face must have been pretty incredible to behold. “ I know, right? I...honestly didn’t see it coming myself, really. In fact, it wasn’t until they were ripping my fucking _clothes_ off that it finally hit me.” Another laugh, and _Christ,_ that one actually sounded painful. “ Really stupid of me, huh?”

“ Of course it’s not stupid!” Jack was dimly proud of himself for keeping the hysteria out of his voice, because _trust him_ , it was there. “ I just…” What were words? What the fuck could he even _say?_ His brain was lagging like a video game on a bad internet connection. “ I just... _they_? Were there…?”

The thought was honestly too horrible for him to finish, but Gabriel still had the impeccable ability to finish his sentences, even when his breathing was beginning to border on hyperventilation. “ Yeah, five of them, I think. I know that there was one undressing me and I saw four getting ready to...I...I honestly…” Gabriel choked on his words, and Jack was almost tempted to wrap his hands around his neck and squeeze, just to get him to _stop_ _talking about it, Gabriel, please, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to!_ “ ...honestly don’t remember much about it. Just that it almost happened. And I didn’t let it.”

“ So they didn’t...they didn’t…” Jack had to mentally slap himself a few times. _For the love of Christ, pull yourself together, for Gabriel’s sake!_ “ They didn’t...um…?”

“ Finish it?” Great, Gabriel, stab him in the gut while you’re at it. It would certainly be less painful. “ No, they didn’t. They got close, but I killed them, remember?”

Jack let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “ Oh, that’s...that’s good. Really good.” He suddenly remembered that his hands were things he could use and resumed his stroking of Gabriel’s back and hair. The touch seemed to ease his trembling. “ At least it could’ve been worse.” _Right?_ **_Right?_ **

Ah, _there_ was the panic; Jack was wondering when it would make an appearance. It just had to break through the layer of _oh my God._

Gabriel desperately gripped at the back of his pajama top. “ Yeah, right?” He sobbed and buried his face into Jack’s chest, and honestly, the explosion in Zurich had hurt less than this. “ So why doesn’t it feel that way, Jackie? I don’t understand…”

No, scratch that, the entirety of their fucking “ _break-up”_ had hurt less than this. At least Gabriel hadn’t been utterly fucking traumatized in the process.

“ Of course it’s not gonna feel good! That’s not what I…!” Jack fumbled, exhaled, and kissed the top of Gabriel’s head. “ That’s not what I meant. At all. I just…”

“ I know what you meant, Jack. I know. ” Jack almost started laughing hysterically at that, because here was Gabriel--teetering on the edge and needing Jack to hold him together--trying to soothe the person that didn’t need soothing, and it was the most _goddamn Gabriel thing to do._ “ It’s just...hard to imagine how I could feel _worse_ , you know?”

“ I can imagine.” No, Jack really couldn’t, because of all the horrible things that had happened to him during his childhood and during the war and during the Fall and after, _nothing_ in his past came close to helping him understand how _violated_ Gabriel must have felt. It didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to do his damndest to try. “ I’m just glad you didn’t try to...I dunno, force yourself to go through with it, like you were saying about the torture thing earlier.”

“ Part of me wishes I did.”

“ _Gabriel--_ ”

“ If I had, then I’d still be working for them.” Gabriel seemed to wilt at the admission, and Jack held him as tightly as he could without hurting him, hoping that his husband would understand through his touch that _he wasn’t blaming him for anything._ “ If I had, I’d still be able to have easy access to everything we need to uncover the truth. If I had, I could’ve kept giving you information that would’ve helped protect people...protect the others. If I had, I would’ve been able to keep working on getting Amélie out.”

“ We can still do those things, Gabo--”

“ I remember thinking…” Gabriel’s words began to spill over each other in his haste to talk, and Jack couldn’t help but picture train cars careening out of control, crashing into and flipping over each other. “ _God_ , one of the only things I remember from that room after I realized what was happening...I remember thinking _I could do this._ It would just be another undercover op. Just another challenge of loyalty. I thought if I could just ‘tough it out’...I thought I _could_ tough it out.”

If it had been any other time, Jack would have cut in with _no, Gabriel, you emergently pulled Blackwatch agents out of ops for lesser circumstances than potential gang-rape, and you would’ve never asked Jesse to do such a thing for a job, so why are you blaming yourself for not being able to bear the unbearable?_ However, as clueless as he was on how to handle this situation, even Jack knew that saying those things would’ve been too hard, too fast, and too soon. So he bit his tongue near bloody and let Gabriel continue uninterrupted. He needed to keep talking.

“...and you wanna know the straw that broke the camel’s back?” Gabriel, if possible, sounded even _more_ ashamed. “ It wasn’t the thought of actually being raped. The last conscious thought I had was... _Christ,_ I don’t know why I was thinking _this_ of all things, but that someone else was going to see me like that, to touch me, to...it’s so _fucking stupid_ , but I thought about you were the only person I ever loved, the only person I _will_ love, and how the thought of being exposed to someone else like that...someone that wasn’t _you_ ...it was just...there were hands on me that weren’t yours, _touching me_ , and I _couldn’t take it._ ” At that Gabriel paused, sobbing too hard to talk, and it took him a few seconds to pull himself together and choke out his words. “ It’s so pathetic. I’m so _fucking pathetic_ , aren’t I?”

  _\--you’re the only one that will ever see me like this. Do you understand, Jack?_ **_Do you understand_ ** _\--_  

Everything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours suddenly sprang into horrifying clarity for Jack. He wanted to vomit. He wanted to scream. He wanted to go to that hollowed-out Talon base and shoot every non-reaped corpse another twenty times. He wanted to find _another_ Talon base and beat every single person into a bloody pulp before setting the installation on fire. He pulled Gabriel into the curve of his body and prayed that it would be enough to keep him safe for a little while.

 “ You’re not pathetic.” His own voice was hoarse and almost foreign to his ears. “ You’re the least pathetic person I’ve ever met. There’s nothing pathetic about what you thought or did--nothing at all.”

 “ You think so?”

“ I _know_ so.” Jack watched as Gabriel picked up his head just enough to look at him, and it took all of Jack’s tenacity to meet his gaze and smile as reassuringly as he could, even though the sight of those wet and bloodshot eyes almost set him off. “ And anyone else you told about this would say the same. Hell, anyone that _went_ through this would probably feel the exact same way you did. I can’t…” He swallowed harshly before continuing. “...I can’t say I really know what you’re feeling right now, but what I do know is that I love the _hell_ out of you, and nothing you just told me has changed a damn thing about that.” 

For a moment, Gabriel simply studied Jack’s face, clearly making sure the younger man was telling him the truth and not feeding him a line of bullshit to make him feel better. It was far from the first time that Jack had been under the scrutiny of “ _those big ol’ wise owl eyes_ ” (as he himself had coined them when they first met), but it felt like one of the most important of those times, and he was sure to meet Gabriel’s eyes with his own unwavering and determined gaze. There was nothing untruthful about his words. There was nothing untruthful about how he felt.

“ You really mean it, don’t you?” Gabriel’s declaration was more than a little awestruck, and despite the tears still steadily streaming down his face and the hitching of his shoulders, the relieved smile he gave Jack was more than a little breathtaking. “ God, Jackie, you’re really something else.”

Jack laughed incredulously. “ Seriously? And you _aren’t_?”

“ Nothing like you.” Gabriel laid his head back down on Jack’s chest and moaned at the feel of those familiar farm-boy fingers combing through his hair. “ All I know is that I don’t deserve you, but you’re here anyways, and I can’t find the words to tell you how good that feels.”

“ And you’re delusional if you don’t think I feel the exact same way about you.” Jack’s forced smile fell into something smaller, sadder, and more genuine. “ I, um, hate to go back on the subject, but is that when you…?”

“ When I killed them all?” Gabriel snorted. “ You bet. Like I said, I don’t remember a lot, but I remember flashes of what happened--like I was watching outside of my body. I clearly remember reaping the one that was...on me. I kinda went nuts on the other four...used my claws to gut one where he was standing, and I think I bit out another one’s throat ; I remember spitting out a chunk of his windpipe on the floor.”

“ _Jesus._ ” Jack shuddered. “ I hope he didn’t have anything you could get from that.”

 Jack hadn’t been trying to make Gabriel laugh, but his husband snickered on top of him all the same, and it was a relief to see those shoulders shaking from something other than sobs.  “ Always the goddamn boy scout. The nanites and all that crap they pumped into us in the SEP make me immune to that kind of shit, remember? Anyways…” The older man hummed thoughtfully before continuing. “ I think one tried to run when he saw me chewing out his friend’s throat. I remember forming my guns when he was at the door and shooting him twice: once in the low back and once in the chest. I wanted him to be lung shot--to drown to death in his own blood--and I think I succeeded from the way he was gurgling.”

 “ And the last guy?”

 “ Slit his throat after he emptied his clip in me.” Jack could feel Gabriel grinning maliciously through his pajama top. “ Not very well, I guess; he managed to staunch the bleeding enough to call me a monster when I turned to shoot the door open.”

 “ Says the guy who was trying to rape you.”

 “ I know, right? Fucking rich.” Gabriel’s grin widened. “ I turned right around and stomped him in the balls with all my strength. Just kept stomping until they were pulverized and he’d screamed himself out of blood. His crotch was pretty much paste by the time I finished.”

 Jack shuddered with something that wasn’t quite delight. Satisfaction, maybe? “ Served that fucker right. Served them _all_ right. Wish I could bring them back to life so I could beat them to death myself.”

 “ Wow, don’t let your old fanclub hear you talk like that, Jackie. They might have to tear down all of their old _Tiger Beat_ posters.” Gabriel snickered as Jack blushed and jabbed him in the ribs with his fingers.

 “ You’re never gonna let me live that fanclub down, are you?”

 “ Nope.” Jack didn’t have to see Gabriel’s face to tell it was bearing a shit-eating grin. “ I’m gonna have to tell Hana Song that story when I meet her.”

 “ Noooooooooooooo…”Jack whined and wiggled in embarrassment, and Gabriel shifted upwards so he could brush his nose against Jack’s, his face full of so much affection that it almost made Jack’s heart pop.

 “ Anyways…” Gabriel lowered his head back down to Jack’s chest and rested his right cheek on his sternum. “ After that, things get...murky. I think that, once I was out of danger, I kind of just...shut down. I remember killing and reaping the guards and personnel that got in my way. I remember watching people run without fighting and letting them go, because they probably didn’t know jack about what the higher ups had planned on doing to me, and some of them were just _kids,_ Jack, even if they worked for Talon. I hope most of them just...went home and got away from this bullshit.” At that he paused, clearly trying to piece together as much as he could of his fragmented memories, and he began tapping a tattoo on Jack’s ribs. “ I remember setting explosives in their ammunition depots. I remember blowing out the commander’s knees and leaving him to die in his office when I set them off. I remember watching the building burn and...and…”

 “ And?” Even Jack’s softest voice seemed booming to his ears.

 “ I hotwired a jeep. Everything just kinda blanked out for a bit after that; next thing I know, the tank is empty, and I’m on some rundown Toledo street. It was practically abandoned, so I just Shadow Stepped my way to the only place I remembered. Then…” Gabriel shuddered. “ I was in the room, and for some reason those fucking jackasses didn’t take my cell phone away when they strung me up, and I just...all I knew was I had to talk to you. I just...I just _needed_ you.”

 A lump swelled up in Jack’s throat that he couldn’t swallow away. “ You kept your promise.”

 “ Yeah.” Gabriel’s voice was as broken as his memories. “ Yeah, I guess I did.”

 Finally, the story was done, and a thick silence settled over the two. Gabriel was crying again, but the tears were silent, and Jack dared to hope that was a good sign. Frankly, he felt like crying himself, and he considered slipping out after Gabriel had fallen asleep to rage and weep in peace. As savage as he--no, as they _all_ had known Talon could be (what, with brainwashing Amélie and using her to assassinate her own husband), he had never once thought they would sink to utter fucking depravity like that, and it was all the more chilling to know that those disgusting shmucks had been _ordered_ to rape Gabriel--that there was a goddamn _chain-of-command_ behind that twisted loyalty test and not just a few soldiers acting on their own. The more he thought about it, the more horrified he became, and the more awful questions came to mind: what exactly _had_ they done to Amélie? What were they doing to her at this moment? What had they done to the Overwatch personnel that had been captured in the field and never found? What were they doing to their own _men_? Was this the reason so many mercenaries refused to work with them in the first place? If Talon was capable of _this_ , then what _else_ were they capable of? What would they do to win whatever war they were fighting? What had they _already_ done?

 “ Jack?” Gabriel’s hoarse voice broke Jack out of his increasingly frantic musings.

 “ I’m still here, Gabo.” Jack pulled Gabriel up so he could hug him better, and the older man complied, eagerly nestling his face into Jack’s neck the moment he was settled and snuggling close. “ I’m just...I’m sorry.”

 “ It wasn’t your fault, Jackie.”

 “ I _know,_ but I’m still sorry it happened, and I’m sorry that I…” There was wetness trailing down Jack’s cheeks, and he screwed his eyes shut and angrily told himself to _cut it out, you shouldn’t be the one crying right now._ “ That I wasn’t there. That I couldn’t protect you.”

 “ Oh, Jackie…” Rough, calloused thumbs were wiping the tears off his cheeks, and Jack opened his eyes to see Gabriel looking at him with concern. “ You aren’t omnipotent, babe...there was no way you could’ve known.”

 “ Are you saying you wouldn’t feel the same if it had been me instead of you?”

 Gabriel frowned at his husband. “ _Touche_.” He sighed and dropped his head back down. “ I appreciate the thought, though. A lot.” Gabriel nosed at the hollow of Jack’s throat, and even though Jack was utterly distraught over the situation, he was still utterly smitten by the sensation of those long eyelashes fluttering against his skin.

 “ Is there anything I can do for you?” The question that had been on Jack’s mind since he picked up the phone over twenty-four hours ago finally sprang from his lips. “ Anything I can do to make you feel better? To help you? Anything at all?” He sounded pathetically desperate, but goddamnit, he’d have walked barefoot on hot coals if that was what Gabriel needed.

Gabriel was quiet for a long time after that, and Jack had honestly thought he’d fallen asleep until he finally answered, his voice weak and vulnerable.

“ Just...hold me, Jackie. Just like this.” He gripped Jack like he was a buoy in a violent storm. “ Stay with me. Don’t go and do anything _stupid_ like I know you want to, and don’t even try to deny it, because I know you too well for that shit.” He pressed wet lips against his neck. “ Don’t leave me alone, sunbeam. Please don’t leave me alone.” 

All thoughts of slipping away when Gabriel was asleep evaporated from Jack’s mind at that request.

“ Never.” As much as Jack wanted revenge--to take out his anger and frustration and helplessness on someone, something, _anything--_ his desire to help Gabriel feel safe again superseded everything else. He would go against the entire fucking _world_ to protect Gabriel, and he swore on everything he believed and everything he’d ever held dear that he’d never let _anything_ like that happen to him again, nor would he _ever_ let them get their grimy mitts on the rest of his family. Talon would have to kill him and go through his ghost and zombified corpse if they wanted to get to his husband, friends, and ‘kids’. “ I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not letting you go ever again; you’re gonna be stuck with me for the rest of our lives.”

Gabriel pulled an arm out from behind Jack’s back and splayed his hand over Jack’s heart. “ I love the sound of that.” His breathing synced with the rise and fall of Jack’s chest. “ Can we make pancakes for breakfast?”

“ Whatever you want to eat is fine with me.”

Gabriel’s eyes slid shut. “ You’re the best, sunbeam…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is a metaphor for how Talon is utterly fucked.
> 
> Fun fact: I call this the "rapefic spitefic" when talking about it with my friends. It was inspired by several fics on AO3 and a whole bunch of fandom stuff. Some of you may be able to guess what I'm spiteful about, but if you don't and/or are curious and/or want to spite together, hit me up in the comments or at "reaper-apologist-andromeda" on Tumblr.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: discussion of past sexual assault and attempted rape, but nothing graphic. Also discussions of racism and sexism. It'll make sense when you read it. Otherwise it's just fluff and comfort and two dorks being saps.

_ It starts like this: _

 

_ It’s exactly one hour after the news breaks about the attempted assassination of Katya Volskaya when Zarya receives a call from the woman herself. Though she is still a member of the Russian Armed Forces, she visits Mei at Gibraltar whenever she’s granted leave, and the urgent call cuts her planned vacation in half. Mei insists on returning to Russia with her girlfriend, and given that there were already reports of the ‘mysterious masked mercenary known as Reaper’ being behind the attack, Jack asks to tag along so he can ‘settle some of his own business in the area’. As soon as they arrive in St. Petersburg, Mei and Zarya take the car waiting for them to Volskaya Industries, and Jack wastes no time calling Gabriel up and letting him know he’s in the area. Gabriel doesn’t sound too surprised to hear from Jack, and he’s quick to give him a series of comprehensive directions to the Talon safe house he’s staying at, specifically mentioning that Widowmaker and Sombra are staying elsewhere for safety. Jack, he chuckles, is free to let himself in when he gets there. _

 

_ Even with his notoriously bad sense of direction, Jack is somehow able to navigate the St. Petersburg Metro and finds his way to the small house on the first try, which he attributes mainly to Gabriel’s thirty-plus years of experience in leading him places. The door’s unlocked, just like Gabriel said it would be, and the thermostat is cranked up to seventy-four degrees in typical Gabriel-in-the-winter-outside-of-California fashion. Jack finds said man dozing off in a steaming bath, and when Jack knocks on the bathroom door before walking in, Gabriel lazily opens his eyes and turns his head to look at him. _

 

_ “ Hey, sunbeam,” Gabriel smiles wanly. His thick, wet curls are plastered against his forehead, and he looks exhausted but happy to see Jack all the same. _

 

_ “ Hey, Gabo.” Jack grins in relief and wastes no time in undressing and climbing into the large claw-footed tub himself. The hot water instantly starts to melt the bitter cold of St. Petersburg out of his bones, and Gabriel is quick to wrap his arms around Jack and pull him flush against him, practically purring in pleasure. Jack goes boneless at the contact, and he’s content to snuggle up to Gabriel in silence, resting his right cheek on his husband’s neck to avoid getting water up his nose and mouth. The first lesson of bathtub cuddling--which is something they’ve both learned through trial and error over the years--is that nothing kills the mood like falling asleep in the wrong position and almost drowning as a result. _

 

_ “ Guessing you heard about Katya Volskaya.” _

 

_ “ Yeah…Zarya got called in for a personal meeting with her. She’s there right now with Mei.” _

 

_ “ Probably wants her to hunt down Sombra…” Gabriel snorts derisively. “ Good luck with that.” _

 

_ “ Sombra?”  _

 

_ “ Yeah. A few weeks ago, Sombra got some info from a defector of a rogue omnic sect; turns out that the ‘savior of Russia’ didn’t come up with the Svyatogor mechs all by herself. Apparently, she was fed the primary tech by several omnic groups, and she gave them…’something’ in exchange. She was too afraid to tell Sombra what it was, and when she tried to press the omnic for more information, she bolted. We haven’t been able to track her down since.” _

 

_ Jack lifts his head up to stare bewilderedly at Gabriel. “ You’re kidding me.” _

 

_ “ I know, right?” Gabriel tries to push his dripping hair off his forehead and sighs in exasperation when it flops right back into place. “ She and I couldn’t believe it ourselves, but the omnic gave Sombra the details on how to access the sect’s private communication server before they fled to the hills, and she used it to do some digging. We found photos of the meetings--lots of ‘em. We verified them all. Believe me, we didn’t want it to be true either, but it is.” _

 

_ “  _ **_Fuck._ ** _ ” Jack breathes and lets his head fall back onto Gabriel’s chest. “ Does Talon know?” _

 

_ “ If they do, they didn’t find out from us; Sombra and I kept that info to ourselves, and we were trying to decide what to do with it when we got an emergency mission order from Talon. Apparently, they decided out of  _ **_nowhere_ ** _ that they wanted Katya Volskaya dead, and they wanted us and Widowmaker to do the job.” _

 

_ “ Why the hell does Talon care about Katya Volskaya?” Jack’s head is starting to hurt from all this goddamn mental whiplash. “ All of the intel we ever got on them while we were in Overwatch showed that they had next to no activity in Russia. Which means we either missed something--” _

 

_ “ --or their plans have changed. “ Gabriel finishes solemnly. “ It can’t be a coincidence that Talon wants her dead as soon as she announces that her new mechs will be ready to roll out in a few months. Part of me doesn’t wonder if they somehow found out about Volskaya’s bargaining chip and didn’t like it.” _

 

_ “ Have you and Sombra found out what it is?” _

 

_ “ No. Whatever Volskaya’s trading with the omnics is still a mystery.” Gabriel hugs Jack a little tighter, clearly uneasy, and the younger man traces what he hopes are soothing circles on his husband’s submerged back. “ We might be able to find out soon, though; Sombra has her by the proverbial balls.” _

 

_ “ What did she do?” _

 

_ Gabriel snorts and pokes Jack in the forehead (which makes the younger man scrunch his face in a way the elder always found adorable). “ Well we weren’t exactly going to  _ **_kill_ ** _ Volskaya, Jackie; I honestly don’t feel like plunging the world into another war while leaving Russia vulnerable to the forces from the Siberian omnium. We infiltrated like we normally would, but Sombra tripped the alarm before Widowmaker could take her shot, which left her to guard the perimeter while Sombra and I went into the factory to ‘finish the job’. Then I just had to take myself out of the picture and let Sombra talk to her ‘privately’.” _

 

_ “ You didn’t talk to Volskaya yourself?” _

 

_ “ Nah; if one of us gets busted for double-crossing Talon, we don’t want to drag each other down. It’s just like how I would split up Blackwatch agents during localized undercover ops to keep them from being conspicuous. Plus, if Widowmaker decided to enter the factory, she’d be suspicious as hell if both Sombra and I went into a room with Volskaya and came out without our kill. So I made a grand show of trying to kill Volskaya and then let myself get hit by one of the new mechs.” Gabriel rolls his eyes and swoons dramatically, even putting the back of his hand to his forehead for dramatic effect. “ ‘Oh nooooo, Volskaya escaped into the elevator, and the big bad mech’s cornered me and hurt me too bad to follow her! Even though Winston slammed me around like a plaything and I was just fine, and even if I was actually busted up from that, I could just Shadow Step after her and rematerialize my body without any injuries! Guess it’s up to little ol’ Sombra to go after her!’” _

 

_ Jack’s laughing well before Gabriel finishes pantomiming, and Gabriel joins him as soon as he finishes dramatizing, letting his head fall back against the edge of the tub as he guffaws. The sound of Gabriel’s notorious laughter--deep, booming, and as warm as bread fresh from the oven--makes Jack feel like he’s a fresh-faced twenty-year-old all over again. Thank God some things never change. _

 

_ “ You really did miss out on a career in acting!” Jack is wheezing a little from how hard he’s laughing, and he breathes in deep lungfuls of steam as he wipes away tears of mirth, not really wanting to have to leave the tub to grab his inhaler. “ Seriously, you’re okay though, right?” _

 

_ “ Don’t have an asthma attack, sunbeam.” Gabriel pokes Jack’s ribs in playful admonishment. “ And I’m fine; I would’ve been bruised to shit if I still had blood in my system, but the impact didn’t even break my ribs. Thank the bone hardening from the SEP for that one.” _

 

_ “ That’s good…” Jack's airways are quick to calm down and he bats Gabriel’s hand away from his side in mock annoyance. “ So, Sombra was able to get to her?” _

 

_ “ Yeah; given Sombra’s ability to turn invisible, it wasn’t hard for her to follow Volskaya into her safe room and take out the guards. Then she laid it out on the table for Volskaya--told her that she wouldn’t leak the photos if she agreed to do a ‘favor’ for her every once in awhile. Volskaya, not being an idiot, agreed.” _

 

_ “ What sort of favors were you two thinking?” _

 

_ Gabriel shrugs. “ I dunno, honestly; we hadn’t really thought that far. All we knew was that we wanted some sort of in on her...some way to keep tabs and get information...and we got it. The bugs Sombra planted in her office while invisible won’t hurt if they aren’t discovered…” Then, lower, “...if  _ **_we_ ** _ aren’t discovered.” _

 

_ Wait,  _ **_what?_ **

 

_ Jack sighs and shifts until he’s lying on his stomach. He lays his hands on Gabriel’s chest and rests his chin on them, peering suspiciously up at his husband, who grins somewhat uneasily back. _

 

_ “ What’s wrong, Gabo?” _

 

_ Gabriel frowns and glances away from Jack. “ It’s nothing.” _

 

_ “ Gabriel.” Said man flinches at the sound of Jack’s ‘Strike Commander’ voice. “ We promised that we wouldn’t hide things from each other anymore.” _

 

_ “ Babe, honestly, it’s just me being paranoid.” _

 

_ “  _ **_Gabriel--_ ** _ ” _

 

_ “ Okay, fine, Jesus!” The older man holds up his hands placatingly before Jack can go into full ‘lecturing father’ mode. “ It’s nothing for you to worry about! I just think…” His eyes dart back and forth, looking for an escape from the conversation, and he sighs in defeat when he finds none. “ I think Widowmaker might be onto us.” _

 

_ Jack’s eyes widen. “ What do you mean?” His voice is hoarse and Gabriel quickly moves to comb his fingers through his husband’s white hair. _

 

_ “  _ **_That’s_ ** _ why I didn’t want to tell you; once a worry-wart, always a worry-wart.” Despite Gabriel’s attempt at being reassuring, there’s an undercurrent of anxiety in his expression, and the way he purses his lips tells Jack that he’s more bothered than he lets on. _

 

_ “ You look like someone who’s lying to me.” Jack’s voice is far sterner than he intends it to be, and he immediately feels guilty when Gabriel bites his lip and turns his head away, scolded and ashamed. “ Shit, Gabo, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that...” Jack gently grips Gabriel’s face in his hands and turns it back to face him. “ Look, even if you think it’s nothing, if it’s bothering you then I want to know about it.” Now it’s Jack’s turn to look embarrassed. “ I’ll just worry more about you if you don’t tell me. Wouldn’t you feel the same if I was the one who was being all cagey and cryptic?” _

 

_ Gabriel sighs heavily, but he’s back to smiling lovingly at his husband, and he turns into Jack’s right hand to nuzzle against his palm. “ Okay, okay, you win. I get it.” He licks at it playfully--an action that never fails to make Jack grumble in the cutest way. “ So, Sombra opens the com back up when she finishes with Volskaya, and she tells us that she escaped. I put on my best ‘pissed off and will shoot at the first living thing that crosses me’ voice and stomp back out to meet up with Widowmaker and get the hell out of dodge. When I exited the factory, I saw Amélie staring down at me, and she had this...fuck, this  _ **_look_ ** _ on her face, like she  _ **_knew_ ** _ something was up.” _

 

_ A chill races up Jack’s spine and he drops his hands. “ You sure?” _

 

_ “ That’s the thing; she was up in her perch, and I wouldn’t have been able to see her face at all if it hadn’t been for my SEP eyes. When I rendezvoused with her and Sombra a few minutes later, she was looking at us normally, so I’m not sure if it was just a trick of the light or the distance or something.” _

 

_ “ What does your gut tell you?” _

 

_ Gabriel closes his eyes. “...that I didn’t imagine it.” _

 

_ Jack suddenly feels cold in spite of the steaming water, and he slides his body up and to the side until he’s lying next to Gabriel in the tub, resting his head on the edge next to Gabriel’s. The older man follows his lead and turns on his side so that he’s facing Jack; he looks old and tired, and Jack doesn’t need a mirror to know he looks the same. _

 

_ “ You’re gonna ask me to jump ship and go back with you, aren’t you?” _

 

_ Jack laughs and shrugs helplessly. “ I would if I didn’t know you as well as I do. If I thought there was any chance that you’d give up being Reaper for good and get on the return flight with me, well, I’d probably start begging. But there isn’t one.” His smile looks and feels painful. “ You’re so determined and strong and willful, you won’t give up a job you’re committed to unless it becomes impossible for you to continue, or you’re dragged out kicking and screaming.” _

 

_ Gabriel blushes and glances away bashfully. “ I’m not  _ **_that_ ** _ bad…” _

 

_ “ Babe, you stuck with  _ **_Overwatch_ ** _ , even after Jesse, Genji, Anastasia,  _ **_and_ ** _ Milion begged you to jump ship. It took you literally  _ **_dying_ ** _ to give up the ghost.” Jack shudders at the memory of Gabriel’s broken body in the aftermath of their betrayal; kneeling over his dead husband in the ruins of all they had built and loved, it was only the thought of vengeance that had kept Jack from taking his sidearm and putting it to his temple. “ I just don’t want that determination to get you killed again. I lost you once, Gabo, and I…” He swallows. “ I can’t survive losing you again.” _

 

 _“ I’m sorry, Jackie.” Gabriel sounds ashamed, and it hadn’t been Jack’s intention to make him feel guilty, but he looks like the definition of the term all the same. “ God, I’m_ ** _sorry_** _, Jack. I wish I could just…” His hands tremble as he cups Jack’s face. “ I can’t lose you either, Jack; that’s why I’m doing this. If things keep going the way they are,_ ** _no one’s_** _going to be safe, and at least I’m mostly immortal.” He leans forward and nuzzles Jack’s nose. “ You_ _and the others aren’t.”_

 

_ “ Not yet.” Jack grins cheekily and boops his husband’s nose. _

 

_ “ No, not yet.” Gabriel smiles in amusement and scrunches his nose. “ I’ve been thinking about that.” _

 

_ “ You have?” _

 

_ “ When I get back to Overwatch, I was thinking that we could talk to Angela. Maybe she could do something about the pain I’m in, and maybe she could find a way to do to you what she did to me, but with fewer shitty side effects.” _

 

_ Jack’s heart swells with hope at those words. “ You really mean it?” His voice is filled with amazement, because Gabriel had wanted nothing more than to rip Angela’s head off the first time they met, and though his anger had cooled over time, he’d stated many times that he’d rather ‘have his fingernails pulled off without sedation’ than to let her examine him again. The fact that Gabriel was even considering letting her put him under the knife… _

 

_ “ Yeah, yeah, I know what I said.” Gabriel, as always, can read Jack like a book. “ I don’t trust her, and I’ll probably never trust her again, but if she’s the only way I can keep you with me...then I’m willing to give it a shot. For you. For us.” _

 

_ Tears well in Jack’s eyes, and he kisses Gabriel every bit of love in his body, an action that makes the older man smile giddily against his lips. “ Thank you, Gabo. Thank you.” _

 

_ A few minutes of satisfied silence later, Jack notices that his fingers are pruney, and he and Gabriel are quick to move from the now-lukewarm water to the surprisingly comfortable bed. Neither of them want to bother with pajamas, so they spend the afternoon spooning naked under the covers, content with watching the falling snow and the sunset out of the small windows of the bedroom. _

 

_ “ Promise me…” Jack strokes the large brown hands resting on the milky skin of his abdomen. “ Promise that you’ll call me if you’re in trouble. You’re not alone in this anymore; if things go south with Talon, let me know and I’ll help you.  _ **_Please_ ** _.” _

 

 _“ You don’t need to beg, sunbeam.” Gabriel kisses the back of Jack’s neck and pulls him as close as possible. “ That’s one promise I can easily keep.”_  

* * *

 

Jack was up and making pancakes by seven in the morning.

 

To be honest, he hadn’t gotten a lick of sleep the rest of the night, while Gabriel had been so emotionally exhausted that he slept like a rock. Though Jack could have gotten out of bed and done something to keep himself entertained, he always took his promises to Gabriel very seriously, so he spent his time guarding his husband’s dreams (lest they turn into nightmares). Fortunately, Gabriel’s sleep was relatively peaceful, and he didn’t even shift or turn as much as he normally did when he was restless or anxious when he went to bed. There were a few times when his shoulders would tighten and his face would twist, but Jack would whisper comforting words in his ear and smooth his furrowed forehead with his thumbs, and it seemed to chase away whatever demons had temporarily taken hold of him.

 

Perhaps said demons latched onto Jack instead, because whenever he closed his eyes, images of  _ what might have happened  _ flickered in front of his eyelids. Jack’s imagination never failed to make things worse.

 

Still, despite his mind going down dark corridors of unspeakable horrors, Jack was able to keep himself still and in bed until seven (which was quite a feat, considering his antsiness and unwillingness to move and possibly wake his husband up). Then he gently detached himself from Gabriel, covered him back up, and went downstairs to get dressed and get started on breakfast.

 

It wasn’t surprising that Gabriel had requested pancakes: while neither he nor Gabriel were the best cooks in the world, they each had a few dishes that their friends and family enjoyed, and it was almost universally agreed on that Jack made some of the best pancakes in the world. It had been his maternal grandmother’s recipe (who, coincidentally, was the only member of Jack’s biological family that hadn’t treated him like garbage), and was able to be easily tailored to the eater’s specific taste. Strawberries for Angela, pecans for Fareeha, cream cheese for Ana, apples for Milion, peaches for Anastasia, and chocolate chips upon chocolate chips for Genji, Lena, and Jesse. The strangest thing he’d ever had requested was when Reinhardt and Torbjorn insisted on adding beer to the batter, and the results were...less than spectacular; he clearly remembered throwing the bitter pancakes in the incinerator before going out with the others for brunch at one of Zurich’s local restaurants.

 

Blueberry pancakes, though, were reserved for Gabriel alone. Even though the older man actually preferred banana pancakes and would eat them at restaurants, he always asked Jack for blueberries whenever he made them from scratch, and he’d always just smile mysteriously and wink at Jack when the others asked why. Then they’d ask Jack, who would blush to the tips of his ears and glare daggers at Gabriel, because it’s not like he’d ever tell them that he’d made blueberry pancakes for breakfast after their first night together. Jack had burnt half the batch and forgotten to add salt to cut the sweetness, but Gabriel insisted they were “the best damn pancakes he’d ever had”, and Jack’s heart still did loop-de-loops when he remembered the mushy kiss they’d shared while cleaning up the kitchen. Fortunately for him, blueberries were one of the primary ingredients in Lena’s disgusting breakfast smoothies, and he distinctly remembered there being one carton left in the fridge.

 

Well, Jack would just have to replace them for her when he had the chance; maybe he and Gabriel could go shopping later.

 

Jack was dressed and halfway through cooking the first batch when he heard Gabriel pad up behind him. “ Mornin’,” he greeted, smiling as Gabriel looped his arms around his waist and rested his chin on his shoulder. “ You sleep okay?”

 

“ Pretty good, actually.” Jack glanced over at Gabriel and saw that he still looked exhausted, but the tension that had been there the day before had mostly melted away, and he was actually smiling as he peered over Jack’s shoulder to examine the contents of the skillet. “ Aww, babe, you remembered!”

 

“ How could I forget? It’s the only food I make that you don’t whine about.” Jack rolled his eyes and playfully swatted at Gabriel with the spatula. “ Cleaned out the last of Lena’s blueberries to make these...was thinking we could go shopping to replace them after we eat.”

 

“ She still making those godawful smoothies?” Gabriel’s nose wrinkled at the thought.

 

“ Are you kidding? Emily’s also crazy about those damn things, and they keep putting weirder and weirder shit in them, saying it’s ‘healthier’ and all that. The last one she made before she left had some weird fucking mushroom powder in it she bought for almost fifty dollars from some celebrity’s website. It tasted like wet logs smell.”

 

“  _ Ugh _ . Almost makes me miss her egg white phase. At least we eventually convinced her to salt them.” Gabriel kissed Jack’s cheek before reluctantly pulling away. “ Gonna wash up while you’re still cooking. Are all my clothes still where they used to be?”

 

“ Unless the closet gremlins rearranged your drawers while we were sleeping, then yeah, I think you’re good.”

 

“ Smartass.” Jack yelped as Gabriel playfully smacked his butt. “ At least you have  _ some  _ ass on you.”

 

“ Make one more crack about my ass and I’ll put that mushroom powder in the rest of these.” 

 

“  _ Ouch.  _ Now that’s cruel and unusual punishment.” Jack didn’t need to turn around to see the shit-eating grin on Gabriel’s face. “ For the sake of my breakfast, I’ll behave--”

 

“ Good.” Jack quickly flipped the pancakes over before they burned and listened to the sound of Gabriel’s footsteps heading back towards the stairs.

 

“--just didn’t know it was a crime to point out that your  _ statue _ had more of an ass than you do.”

 

Jack whirled around and flung a kitchen towel at his retreating husband's head. Gabriel dodged it with ease--snickering all the while--and Jack himself couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of Gabriel calling  _ him  _ a smartass. It seemed no amount of trauma could dampen his mischievous side.

 

_ (Thank God.) _

 

It took twenty minutes to finish cooking the rest of the batter, and Jack had just finished plating the last of the blueberry pancakes when Gabriel came back downstairs, damp from the shower and wearing an old band sweatshirt and black jeans. They ate breakfast at the kitchen table, their legs tangling together underneath, and Jack couldn't help but be stymied at how  _ normal  _ it all felt. The man who had confessed to being sexually assaulted and almost  _ gang _ - _ raped  _ the night before was casually sitting next to him, drinking milk and gesticulating with his fork as he discussed his ideas for repairing the Watchpoint, and it was like his breakdown the night before hadn't happened. Jack knew that if the same thing had happened to him, he'd have been utterly fucked up for days, if not  _ weeks  _ or  _ months _ , and just because Gabriel was humming as he helped Jack pick up their dishes wasn’t a sign that he was okay. In fact, his seeming nonchalance made Jack worry  _ more,  _ since he knew Gabriel was the master of pretending that he was fine.

 

Everyone that didn’t know Gabriel (or, rather, everyone who didn’t even  _ bother  _ to try getting to know him) always assumed that he was a rock: stoic, silent, and stalwart, standing in the corner with crossed arms and a thoughtful frown on his face during meetings, and able to make the hard decisions without breaking a sweat. Jack himself had overheard dozens of persons call Gabriel ‘heartless’, ‘soul-less’, a ‘sadist’, and--in one memorable instance--a ‘cold-hearted bastard that didn’t have the emotions God gave a gnat’. It never failed to make the former Strike Commander want to punch the gossipers’ lights out, because a combination of ignorance and racism--let’s face it--had made them unable to see just how deeply Gabriel  _ felt _ ; that yes, he was introverted and quiet around people he didn’t know, and was able to make logical decisions in the face of emotion, but he was still one of the most loving people Jack had ever met. They never realized that Gabriel sometimes felt so deeply and intensely that his only defense was to internalize it all--to push it to the bottom and tamp it down until it became too powerful to suppress and came out in a boiling gush. Then again, many people didn’t want to get to know the man behind the mask, so they never saw the man that would cry whenever he watched sad movies and shows or read sad books. They never met the man that would randomly track Jack down in the middle of the day simply because he missed him and wanted to take a few minutes to snuggle; the man who crafted handmade birthday gifts for all of his friends up until the day of the Fall; the man who would always give Fareeha piggyback rides whenever she asked, even if he was in the middle of an important phone call; the man who would lie in bed after Jesse came to Overwatch and worry sleeplessly to Jack about how he was acclimating, if he was getting along with everyone okay, and if he would be okay his first time out on the field; the man who would stop and pet every dog they saw during their routine morning jogs; the man who spent one year knitting Christmas sweaters for every single one of Torbjorn’s kids. They never saw the man that would personally call the families of every Blackwatch member lost in the field; the man that Jack would sometimes wake up to find trying to scratch the skin off his arms because of a blood-drenched nightmare; the man who would return from Blackwatch missions with haunted eyes and a constant tremble that could only be soothed by Jack’s embrace; the man that tried to put the world on his shoulders and do the right thing, even if it meant destroying himself and his reputation, and even after he  _ was  _ destroyed, he kept fighting to do the right thing, making a mask known as ‘Reaper’ to keep the world safe.

 

No, they never saw that man. Instead, they tried to slot Gabriel Reyes into roles and stereotypes their limited imaginations could understand. They turned him into the Hard-Ass Commander, the Emotionless Brown Guy, the Sadistic Angry Black Villain, and/or the Hot, Nymphomaniac, Latinx Sex Object. Jack still clearly remembered an incident that occurred after he and Gabriel started dating: all of the SEP candidates had been performing outdoor training exercises in the middle of summer, and a bunch of recruits wouldn’t stop wolf-whistling and catcalling Gabriel, who had the  _ audacity _ to wear short gym shorts that showed off his (admittedly amazing) thighs (nevermind that it was a perfectly reasonable outfit, since it was  _ really fucking hot out and he didn’t want to get fucking heat-stroke while running laps).  _ Fortunately, Gabriel hadn’t heard them, and Jack had gone over to (very nicely, in his opinion) ask them to stop before he did. This, of course, did nothing but inspire them to ask Jack about how often they’d had sex and if Gabriel called him ‘papi’ in bed. Five minutes, a pair of severely bruised knuckles, and five bloodied and battered recruits running away from Jack with their tails between their legs later, Jack was washing the blood off his hands before anyone found out about the fight, and no one dared to make any public sexual comments about Gabriel ever again. If they made any at all, it wasn’t where he or Gabriel could hear them, and that was more than fine by him.

 

Point was, while most everyone would look at Gabriel and comment about how well he was taking the whole thing, Jack knew better. There was absolutely  _ no fucking way  _ he was fine.

 

“ Are you okay?” The two of them were doing the dishes by the time Jack mustered the courage to ask.

 

Gabriel didn’t look at Jack as he wiped the soap suds off his hands with a towel. “ What do you mean?”

 

“  _ Gabo. _ ” Jack fixed him with a  _ look,  _ but Gabriel didn’t see it, since he appeared far more engrossed with scrubbing a plate than engaging in conversation. “ We can’t just ignore what happened last night.”

 

“ I’m not ignoring what happened.” The forced nonchalance in Gabriel’s voice would’ve fooled anyone but Jack (and possibly Ana). His husband truly missed out on a fantastic career in drama. “ I’m just trying to enjoy the morning, you know? It’s been the first time I’ve seen you in months, and now that I’m here to stay, I’m just...I’ve imagined myself being here with you and the others for so long...dreams like this kept me sane when I was with Talon.” 

 

_ Talon.  _ Jack’s stomach curled with white hot fury at the mention of the organization. He’d make all of those fuckers pay. “ I’m glad you’re here too, Gabriel...this is really, really nice. We haven’t done stuff like this since our time in Dorado.” Jack took the dripping plate from Gabriel’s hands and began to dry it. His husband made no move to pick up another dish. “ It’s honestly kinda surreal to think you’re here for good.”

 

Gabriel snorted. “ You’re telling me. When I woke up this morning, I actually…”

 

He trailed off.

 

“ Actually what?”

 

“ Nothing. It’s dumb. Just forget I said anything.” Gabriel made to grab the dish rag, but Jack’s hand snatched out and caught his wrist, gently tugging it away from the sink. “ Come on, Jack…”

 

“ Will you stop hiding things from me already?” Gabriel flinched and turned his head even further away from Jack. “ Gabo, if you don’t tell me what’s wrong, then I can’t help you. I  _ want  _ to know what happened this morning.”

 

“ I’ve already caused you enough drama.” Gabriel’s voice was raspy and weak and made Jack’s throat feel like it was clenching around broken glass. “ It’s okay. Really. We don’t have to talk about it anymore. I’ll get over it.” His hand shook in Jack’s. “It’s fine. No biggie.”

 

Jack didn’t respond at first. Instead, he lifted Gabriel’s hand to his lips and kissed his palm, and then kissed down each individual knuckle once, twice, three times. Gabriel’s shoulders heaved with a sob, and he finally turned to face Jack, skin smoking and red-brown eyes drowning in tears. 

 

“ Jackie…”

 

Jack dropped Gabriel’s hand and opened his arms, and the older man nearly threw himself into his embrace, keening and whimpering and gripping the back of Jack’s standard-issue Overwatch shirt tightly enough to tear it. “ I’m sorry…” He warbled. “ I don’t know why I can’t just pull myself together…”

 

“ Shhhhh…” Jack guided Gabriel’s head to rest on his shoulder before hugging him fully. “ I’m not upset with you. You don’t have to force yourself to be fine just to make me happy.” He rubbed his cheek against Gabriel’s temple and began to rock them from side to side. “ Gabo, just because you killed them before they could rape you doesn’t mean you weren’t violated, and you were already struggling to keep it together before that.  _ No one  _ would come through all that shit in one piece.”

 

“ I know…” Though Gabriel sounded utterly wrecked, the smoke wafting off of him began to thin out, and his trembling body melted against and moved easily with Jack’s. “ I know that, sunbeam, but I just…”

 

“ You don’t want to upset me or worry me.” Jack’s voice picked up where Gabriel’s left off, and after a moment of silence, the older man nodded against his shoulder. “ Gabo, I’m gonna worry more if you keep everything bottled up; I know how much it hurts you to keep all that shit locked away. Fuck, we tried so hard to keep from worrying each other, we ended up making everything with Overwatch  _ worse  _ because we couldn’t tell each other what was wrong _. _ ” Jack choked, swallowed, and pressed on. “ You don’t have to destroy yourself to try to keep me happy like you did back then. I don’t  _ want  _ you to. We promised each other, didn’t we? No more secrets between us.”

 

Gabriel hesitated before sniffling and nodding again.

 

“ There you go.” Jack leaned his head against Gabriel’s and closed his eyes. “ You don't have to deal with this alone, Gabriel; I'm here for you and I'm not going anywhere. So please, if you need to talk, then talk to me.”

 

“ What if I'm too much for you?” The whispered question was clearly anguished, but Jack couldn't help but laugh, pulling away from Gabriel just enough to hold his face in his hands.

 

“  _ Too much for me?  _ Angel…” Jack smiled in both love and bemusement as he thumbed the tears off of Gabriel's sharp cheekbones. “ We got each other  _ blown up.  _ You actually  _ died  _ and came back to life. We were trying to  _ kill each other  _ before we found out who we were. Hell, our friends once held an intervention for us because they thought we were too co-dependent. I think we passed the point of us being too much for each other a long time ago.”

 

Gabriel actually  _ laughed  _ at that--a sniffling, ugly, choking thing. “ Guess that's one way to think about it.” He rested his cheek on Jack’s shoulder and sighed. “ Still can’t believe that intervention shit, and it’s been what, twenty years?”

 

Jack shrugged. “ We’ve always been too close for a lot of people. Maybe they’re right about it being bad for us, but it’s too late to change that now; I don’t know any other way to be at this point.”

 

“ It’s none of their goddamn business anyhow.” Gabriel grumbled. “ As long as we’re happy and not hurting each other or anyone else, who the fuck cares? Angela’s a surgeon, not a goddamn psychiatrist, and the rest of the team had even less of a right to meddle in our relationship. ”

 

“ I know, but it’s not like they did it out of meanness; they were honestly trying to be helpful.”

 

“ Well, I didn’t give a fuck about what they thought about us then, and I give even less of a fuck now.” Gabriel’s hand slid up Jack’s back to toy with the soft white hair on the nape of his neck. “ From the moment I met you, I knew you were gonna be important to me, even if I didn’t know in what way or how much. I’d rather be abnormal with you than normal with anyone else.”

 

For the second time in fifteen minutes, Jack’s eyes were watery and his throat was tight, and it was all his  _ stupidly wonderful husband’s fault.  _

 

“ Stop out-romancing me, you shithead.” He sniffled and playfully needled Gabriel in the ribs. “ You’re literally crying on my shoulder right now. It’s not fair.”

 

“ Leave me alone…” Gabriel wriggled and squirmed away from Jack’s tickling fingers. “ ‘s not my fault you weren’t born with a suave bone in your body. Or a decent ass.”

 

“ You love my flat ass, though.”

 

“ I  _ guess. _ ”

 

Jack huffed in mock indignance, and Gabriel chuckled against his shoulder, scratching the base of the younger man’s neck absentmindedly. Sensing that his husband needed some time to get his thoughts together, Jack kissed his temple and rocked them from side to side, knowing that both quiet and closeness calmed Gabriel like nothing else. It was a shame he couldn’t hum a tune to their swaying.

 

It was a few minutes until Gabriel spoke. “ Jackie?” 

 

“ Yeah, babe?”

 

“ Do you think we can just stay in today?” Though his tone was still slightly apologetic, Jack was surprised at how serene his husband’s voice was otherwise; maybe he wasn’t the only one watlzing to imaginary music. “ I know you wanna go grocery shopping and stuff, but I’m exhausted, and it looks like it’s gonna storm soon.”

 

“ It is?” A quick glance out the windows confirmed that, yes, the sky was heavy with dark gray clouds and the wind was whipping the scant foliage surrounding the living complex into a frenzy.  _ It’ll rain within the hour,  _ reasoned the part of Jack’s brain that never stopped watching the sky and thinking about its impact on his hypothetical crops,  _ and it’ll probably last until the afternoon.  _

 

“ I mean, I just can’t...I don’t think I can handle being in public right now, but you could definitely go by yourself if you want to.” The tightening of Gabriel’s grip on the back of his shirt belied his casual tone. “ It’s not like the rain’d make you melt or anything. I could just stay here and start fixing up the place...maybe see if there are any of my old projects in storage--”

 

“ Shh!” Jack pulled slightly away from Gabriel and put a finger to his confused husband’s lips. “ Do you hear that?”

 

“ No?”

 

“ It’s the sound of the couch calling to us.” Jack dropped his finger and smirked. “ It’s saying that is has couple of blankets and a few trashy novels we haven’t had the chance to finish.”

 

 

As Jack spoke, the bewilderment on Gabriel’s face melted away, leaving only an amused smile and eyes brimming with relief. “ Is it now?”

 

“ Yep. It might even be saying something about how there’s a bunch of your old yarn and knitting stuff packed away in a box downstairs; it should be enough to keep you occupied for an afternoon at the very least.”

 

“  _ Huh _ . Sounds like the couch is implying something.”

 

“ I think it is.” Jack gently rested his forehead against Gabriel’s. “ I think it wants us to crank up the old gas fireplace and have a good ol’ stitch n’ bitch. We may never want to eat miso soup again by the time tomorrow rolls around, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”

 

Gabriel sniffled and rubbed his nose against Jack’s. “ Have I told you how much I love you today?” His voice was as fond and wobbly as his smile. “ Because I do. I love you to the monkey murder colony and back.”

 

“ Well  _ I  _ love you to the  _ gorilla  _ murder colony and back, and since I’m the factually-correct one, it means I love you more.”

 

“ Are you seriously arguing semantics with me, you little shit?!” Gabriel’s grin made Jack forget all about the overcast sky outside. “ You know damn well there were gorillas  _ and  _ monkeys on Horizon!”

 

“ Yeah,  _ one  _ monkey, compared to what?  _ Twenty  _ gorillas? That means my love’s, like, twenty-times bigger than yours.” Jack winked, and Gabriel absolutely cracked up, letting go of Jack so he could hug his sides.

 

“ I can’t believe I just made a heartfelt-as-fuck declaration of love to an unsalted boiled potato like you!” Gabriel wiped his eyes and heaved for breath. “ An over-boiled potato with a flat ass! This is bullshit! I want a refund!”

 

“ Sorry, babe, but the warranty expired thirty-two years ago. No returns, refunds, or exchanges.” Jack grabbed Gabriel’s hand and couldn’t believe how light his heart felt after everything that had happened; had he reached the point where his hysteria blurred into mirth, or was it simply Gabriel’s innate ability to light up the darkest of days? Both? Both. “ Guess you’re just stuck snuggling on the couch with starchy ol’ me.” 

 

“ Oh  _ well. _ ” Gabriel had finally stopped laughing, and though he rolled his eyes and huffed like a disappointed two-year-old, he squeezed Jack’s hand and eagerly followed him to the common room. “ As long as I’m the little spoon, I guess I can live with it.”

 

“ Sunflower, after everything you’ve been through, you can be the little spoon for the rest of our lives.”

 

The common room looked the same as it had seven years ago: a mish-mash of plush IKEA chairs, sofas, and tables (that Torbjorn had sworn up-and-down he made himself, but no, Angela found the price tags in the incinerator pile too many times in the past for  _ that  _ to be believable) surrounding a large stone, circular gas fireplace and several holo-television hook-ups. While Jack lit the fireplace, grabbed some of the books left unfinished after their two month vacation, and gathered as many blankets and pillows he could find, Gabriel went to rummage around in the storage boxes downstairs, returning several minutes later with a grin on his face and a hodgepodge of yarn and knitting needles in his arms. Together they made a nest of blankets and pillows on the couch closest to the fire, and Jack--as always--climbed in first, with Gabriel waiting until Jack made himself comfortable before laying on top of him and pillowing his head on his chest. 

 

They spent the day like they had many in the past: cocooned in cotton warmth as thunder rumbled and rain poured down, with Jack reading aloud and Gabriel working on whatever crafting project had caught his interest. As Jack tore through melodramatic romance novel after even  _ more  _ melodramatic romance novel, Gabriel listened with his patented “scarily-insane multitasking powers” (name courtesy of a ten-year-old Fareeha Amari), able to take in every word of love at its most corny while flawlessly knitting leg warmers. By the time Jack had ploughed through several cheesy “Seduction and Suspense” serials, Gabriel had completed two pairs of long, fuzzy slipper socks: one pair knit from wool the color of a robin's egg and dotted with familiar neon pink rabbit logos; the other, much larger pair knit from a more durable yellow yarn and covered with neon green frog heads. By the time he was a quarter way through his next pair--a short, wide pair made from midnight blue wool and with the beginnings of a large penguin on the sides of each sock--Gabriel’s eyes were beginning to droop, so Jack gently took the knitting out of his hands and set it on the ground next to his books, pulling his husband close and closing his own eyes for mid-day  _ siesta. _

 

“ Hey, Jack.”

 

“ Mhn?” Jack cracked one eye open and peered down at the dark curls resting on his chest.

 

“ If you get up before me in the morning, which you usually do…do you think you can wake me up and let me know?”

 

Now both eyes were fully open. “ Are you sure? You usually try to bite my hand off whenever I try to force you to get up early…”

 

“ I don’t mean, like, waking me up exactly. I just mean to just let me know you’re leaving.” Gabriel seemed to be hiding his face in Jack’s pecs. “ It’s just that...look, when I woke up this morning, and I realized you were gone, for a moment I thought…”

 

“ Yeah?” Jack’s voice was softer than the pillows they were lounging on.

 

“ It was dark when I woke up, and I was still half asleep, so I...I thought I was back in Toledo.” The admission came with a sigh of defeat. “ I thought that I was still in the hotel and had dreamed you showing up, and for a moment, I…”

 

Jack's throat tied itself in a knot.  _ Oh. _

 

“ Yeah, sure.” He was quick to cut off Gabriel’s train of thought before he became needlessly distressed. “ So long as you promise to not kick me in the balls for daring to interrupt your beauty sleep.”

 

“ That was  _ one time, _ ” Gabriel groused, “ and it was an  _ accident.”  _ He halfheartedly punched Jack in the side before settling back against his chest. “ But yeah, sure, promise. Thanks, Jackie.”

 

Jack smiled, eyes drooping, and he pressed a kiss against Gabriel’s head before tipping his head back against the pillows. Within seconds he was asleep, drooling into Gabriel’s hair, but Gabriel simply rolled his eyes and pressed closer.

 

For the first time in two days, Gabriel Reyes felt safe, and having to wash his hair when he woke up was more than worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh, yeah. I meant every word I said and won't apologize. Come at me bro.
> 
> The OCs mentioned will make an appearance in a future Overwatch series I'm writing (which will be FAR less dark than this story). Keep an eye out in the (distant) future for that if you're interested.
> 
> PS: super soldiers = super crafters.


End file.
